Why I'm campaigning against new housing near Boroughbridge

Steve Cove is a campaigner for the Protect Our Village residents group, which is objecting to overdevelopment in the villages near Boroughbridge. In this column, he explains why he is opposed to the new housing and raises questions about the government's housebuilding drive.

I moved to Kirby Hill around six years ago into a new bungalow on the edge of the village. Most people seemed to agree that the small, sensibly sized estate, completing the southern village boundary, was appropriate. That boundary sits higher than the fields next to it and serves as a marker for the ‘hill’.

I didn’t move to get involved in campaigns, national events, or local politics, nor to try and understand swathes of documents (new and old) about why our village is the perfect place to be changed completely, and how good that will be for everyone.

I don’t think the existing residents wanted that either and most are just as bemused, frustrated and angry.

Here are some of the questions:

• How does it make sense to build nearly 500 new houses and a motorway services area within a mile of each other on a busy road either side of a village of only 300 properties - then argue that it will ‘enhance’ the character of the village?
  
• Why is solving the issue of sewage running down streets a question of finance not public health?
  
• Why should residents who have limited parking outside their own homes have to park up to 100 yards away because a new site entrance will direct all cars straight onto their existing car parking spaces also causing a safety hazard? While we think about that, why do new builds have allocated parking in line with Council standards but those standards not apply to ‘old’ builds?
  
• Why does the department responsible for agriculture and food production policy announce that high quality productive farmland should remain protected from development, but the department responsible for planning allow the consistent, permanent removal of such land, a little at a time, to see if we notice (trust me: we do, it’s happened for 15 years)?
  
• How can the local plan, approved by residents, lasting to 2035, and setting out the distinction between types of settlement and development limits, be downgraded on a whim?
  
• How can the natural rural barriers that separate settlements, and provide not just working farms (and jobs) but local amenity space, recognised as (another) key aspect of public health, just be removed?
  
• Why do we still approve projects that might lead to better services, e.g. public transport, doctors, dentists, against existing evidence?
  
• Why do we say developments are sustainable if they encourage active travel when the absence of meaningful local jobs means residents have to drive elsewhere to work?
  

And for those who think we’re just NIMBYs - but should listen more carefully – here are some things to consider.

Firstly, why didn’t the government identify under-utilised public sector, ‘brownfield’ land and instruct councils to build on that first, in line with their own policy and public pronouncements?

Secondly, why don’t North Yorkshire Council start with four airfields (Dishforth, Linton, Tockwith, Topcliffe) submitted to their ‘call for sites’ exercise, which have basic services, and which would meet most of the revised target on their own?

The council could also renovate and re-energise areas with unused commercial buildings and ‘inadequate’ housing (which constitute part of the government’s ‘target’) – or do we leave them to disintegrate while we build elsewhere?

We could also ask why councils could not keep a register of low grade agricultural land as well as brownfield sites for potential development – keep it updated - and use it.

I am sure there’s no perfect model. It’s obvious though that the focus should be a collective effort to develop communities, not a haphazard adversarial approach to build as many houses as possible to meet a self-imposed target that makes no sense.