This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT
    • Politics
    • Transport
    • Lifestyle
    • Community
    • Business
    • Crime
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Education
    • Sport
    • Harrogate
    • Ripon
    • Knaresborough
    • Boroughbridge
    • Pateley Bridge
    • Masham
  • What's On
  • Offers
  • Newsletter
  • Podcasts

Interested in advertising with us?

Advertise with us

  • News & Features
  • Your Area
  • What's On
  • Offers
  • Newsletter
  • Podcasts
  • Politics
  • Transport
  • Lifestyle
  • Community
  • Business
  • Crime
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Education
  • Sport
Advertise with us
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Latest News

We want to hear from you

Tell us your opinions and views on what we cover

Contact us
Connect with us
  • About us
  • Advertise your job
  • Correction and complaints
Download on App StoreDownload on Google Play Store
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Statement
  • Comments Participation T&Cs
Trust In Journalism

Copyright © 2020 The Stray Ferret Ltd, All Rights Reserved

Site by Show + Tell

Subscribe to trusted local news

In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

  • Subscription costs less than £1 a week with an annual plan.

Already a subscriber? Log in here.

15

Aug 2023

Last Updated: 15/08/2023
Environment
Environment

Barn conversion 'free for all' could lead to 'destruction' of Dales, say national park leaders

by Stuart Minting Local Democracy Reporter

| 15 Aug, 2023
Comment

0

davidbutterworth
David Butterworth, chief executive of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA).Photo: YDNPA.

National park leaders have criticised a government proposal to allow landowners to redevelop barns in protected landscapes into homes without planning consent.

Leading officers at both the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors national parks have said the potential relaxation of the planning system outlined in a Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities consultation were very concerning.

National park bosses are dismayed a proposal to give farmers permitted development rights on barns has resurfaced less than a decade after the government abandoned the same proposal amid an outcry.

In 2014, park authorities and MPs raised concerns about the suburbanisation of rural areas if a swathe of barns was turned into homes, saying the proposal flew in the face of protecting national parks.

Impetus for the latest proposal has been linked to the government abandoning housing targets and an attempt to find ways to increase housebuilding in the face of a national housing shortage.

The consultation states: 

“Allowing our town and village centres within protected landscapes (such as national parks) to benefit from the right could help ensure the longer-term viability and vitality of these community hubs, supporting the residents and businesses that rely on them.
“We also want to support the agricultural sector by providing further flexibilities to farmers to undertake works on their agricultural units and enable farm diversification without having to submit a planning application.”


Chris France, director of planning at the North York Moors National Park Authority, said agricultural buildings played a key contribution to cultural heritage of the country’s national parks.

He said: 

“We don’t say you can’t do anything with them, but the whole point in having a planning system in a protected landscape is to carefully control those changes.
“The proposal to take barn conversions outside the planning process completely disenfranchises local populations, neighbours and in national parks, the nation, because we wouldn’t have any input into whether we think a proposal is acceptable.
“In national parks this isn’t going to deliver more housing for local people, which is what’s needed, it will just deliver more holiday homes and destroy our finest landscapes at the same time.”






Read more:



  • Action to tackle Yorkshire Dales second homes receives ‘overwhelming support’

  • Criticism as ‘affordable’ Yorkshire Dales national park houses marketed at up to £320,000






The national park leaders said the move would do nothing to ease the need for affordable housing in either area as developers would not have any restriction on the type of homes they created.

Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority chief executive David Butterworth said the proposal would mean up to 6,500 field barns across the 841sq mile area could be converted into homes, “decimating” the landscapes.

He added: 

“If I was trying to devise a policy that would essentially lead to the destruction of Yorkshire Dales national park, this would be the policy. These are permitted development rights to convert a property without any planning restriction.
“It is one of the most bonkers examples of environmental destruction I could think of. I am extremely concerned that this has been introduced now with an eight-week consultation. It is just crackers.”


A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: 

“This consultation remains open and we will consider all responses, including that from National Parks UK, before coming to a decision. We have been clear that any developments must be beautiful and enhance the environment.”