Knaresborough’s 1,000-home estate with no community facilities

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A mile from Knaresborough town centre, where tourists flock, 1,000 homes are being built on a site nobody visits.

The new Manse Farm and Highfield Farm developments are devoid of community facilities and public transport.

The new estates highlight the problems associated with Section 106 agreements — they’re painfully slow, impossible to understand and don’t put residents’ needs first.

The Section 106 agreement for Manse Farm, intended to mitigate the effects of 600 homes, promised a primary school and community centre. A £2 million landowner contribution would go towards the school.

The agreement was published in November 2013 and building began five-and-a-half years later. Many homes have been occupied for years and construction continues.

The Section 106 agreement that followed for the adjoining 402-home Highfield Farm estate included a £1.36 million developer contribution towards the ‘Manse Farm primary school’.

But neither the school nor the community centre has progressed beyond artists’ impressions.

Separately Tom Gordon, the Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, has campaigned for a rail halt in the area.

But the only amenity is an Aldi that skirts alongside the estates.

Warnings have been unheeded. In summer 2024, Goldsborough and Flaxby Parish Council bemoaned “the absence of commercial and community facilities” in its objection to the Highfield Farm site and warned the area would become a “sprawling residential estate with no heart”.

Residents have lost out and nobody seems to know what is going on.

Tangled web

Few people understand local politics better than David Goode, a Knaresborough town councillor. But even he is baffled.

When we met Cllr Goode at Manse Farm he arrived with an armful of paperwork accumulated over years.

“We are now 10 years into this development from its original planning applications, and we don’t have a school and we don’t have community facilities,” he says.

A major problem is that accountability is on shifting ground. The Manse Farm land was initially bought by Leeds-based developer CEG, which sold it to Taylor Wimpey, which is developing the eastern ‘parcel’, called Trinity Fields.

Linden Homes is responsible for the western part, dubbed Castle Gate, and through a partnership with Home Group is building the 40% of ‘affordable’ homes. Bovis Homes, like Linden, is part of the Vistry Group, and has yet another segment of Manse Farm.

Taylor Wimpey is due to build all 402 houses on Highfield Farm.

“It’s a tangled web in terms of what’s going on,” laments Cllr Goode. “The responsibility for that Section 106 suddenly starts to diminish as the number of parties gets bigger and bigger. Who’s got responsibility for what?”

The vanishing community centre

A meeting between Knaresborough Town Council and Taylor Wimpey last autumn finally ascertained the developer is responsible for the elusive community centre — but that doesn’t mean one will be built.

Taylor Wimpey told the meeting it was trying to find a separate company to build it.

“And lo and behold, nobody is interested in doing it,” says Cllr Goode. “We’ve got an estate that is ultimately going to have 1,000 houses on it and it doesn’t look like it’s going to have a community centre. You get to that point and you’re thinking maybe the Section 106 agreement is not worth the ink it’s written with.”

Taylor Wimpey told the Stray Ferret it was “up to date” with Section 106 payments, which are split 50/50 with Vistry (Linden and Bovis Homes).

Taylor Wimpey has paid £700,480 towards the primary school and just under £554,000 in secondary education contributions — slated to go towards additional school places in Knaresborough.

The remaining contributions will be paid at the 450th occupation and when all the houses on Manse Farm are occupied. The builder said its section, comprising 324 homes, is “80% per cent sold”.

But a community centre is not on the cards. According to Taylor Wimpey, its ‘parcel’ contains land for shops which are being marketed, but “there will be no community centre”.

Where are the buses?

The original Section 106 said the developer would provide £650,000 — more now after indexation — towards procuring a bus service linking Manse Farm and Knaresborough town centre.

But while a bus service skirts the edge of Manse Farm, it doesn’t actually go into it.

Taylor Wimpey says it has contributed £160,000 to “bus service improvements” with the remaining contributions to be paid over the next three years.

But what really rankles is the empty space where the school, originally scheduled to open in September 2022, should be.

The latest hurdle is the diversion of an electric cable over the land earmarked for the primary school. According to Taylor Wimpey, work to re-direct it was due to be finished this autumn, then the land will be transferred to North Yorkshire Council.

The council says developers have contributed £901,080 of £2 million required for primary education and “the remaining balances are to be paid on occupation triggers”.

It says £265,000 of the total £650,000 bus contribution has been paid/invoiced but “a bus service cannot be operated through the new estate as the necessary connecting road (Brimstone Way) has yet to be constructed".

As for when the school will be built, it says it is “continuing to monitor the requirement for additional school places and will bring forward proposals in due course”.

‘The council doesn’t deliver things’

Residents are the losers in all this.

“It’s quite upsetting to think that we could have had a school in situ a few years ago at a time when the population is expanding, and it’s not been delivered,” says Philip Allott, the former North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner from Knaresborough.

“Unfortunately, it follows a pattern of behaviour where the council doesn’t deliver things. And Harrogate Borough Council was no better.”

North Yorkshire County Council abandoned the procurement procedure to build the school in April 2021 because the land had not been transferred. Its corporate director of children’s and young people’s services said at the time that the development of the site had not progressed “as per the developer’s original programme due to a number of factors including house sales, build-out rates, infrastructure installation and diversion”.

More than four years on, the council will still not confirm when construction will begin. However, its Infrastructure Funding Statement for 2023/24 – a mandatory inventory of how Section 106 contributions have been collected and spent – allocated £1.41 million to Manse Farm New School and two other schools (Harrogate West Primary and Tockwith Church of England Primary).

The original Section 106 agreement from 2013 gives the council five years from the occupation of 500 dwellings – which hasn’t happened yet – to insist the freehold for primary school land is transferred by the developers. So there is leeway for yet more foot dragging.

Cllr Goode says it’s not true to say absolutely nothing is happening regarding Manse Farm Section 106 – promised improvements to roads have occurred, for example – but progress is slow and accountability non-existent.

“I cannot be confident what those enhancements of the amenities are going to be, that they will truly meet the needs of the local community,” he says. “And that’s where I’ve got real concerns about Section 106 agreements.”

Tomorrow — what has happened to pledges made over Ripon's Bishop's Glade development around Doublegates Avenue?

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