Ripon man’s five-year quest to trace the money

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Ian Kendall has spent five years trying to understand what has happened to promises made to Ripon residents on a new housing estate.

His experience sums up how difficult it is for people to understand a planning system that seems designed to confuse and frustrate.

It should also serve as a warning to anyone wanting to track community payments pledged this year for the forthcoming 1,300-home scheme on nearby army land.

We met in his detached house near Ripon Grammar School.

Since 2021, the 145-house Bishop’s Glade development, around Doublegates Avenue, has sprung up at the end of Mr Kendall’s street.

When planning permission was granted, “we knew that our quiet cul-de-sac was gone,” confesses Mr Kendall. “But we were adamant that we would be on it to make sure that the council did everything they should do. We were up to our necks in looking through documents.”

Initially, they scrutinised dust clouds floating over the estate and the times construction trucks were permitted to trundle down residential streets to the Harron Homes development.

But soon Mr Kendall hit upon something he hadn’t heard of: a Section 106 agreement, which details the developer’s legal obligations to mitigate the impact of the development.

Promises hanging in the air

The agreement wasn’t user-friendly: written by lawyers, it was scanned and couldn’t be searched online in the way a normal document could. But the sums involved were significant, adding up to over £1.5 million.

The development is now complete, the trucks have disappeared, and relative quiet has returned to this patchwork of residential streets off Clotherholme Road. But there is nothing telling residents what has and hasn’t been paid and promises appear to be hanging in the air.

He goes through the list: 

Section 106 payments are drawn up by councils and developers to compensate communities for the impact of new homes. They’re usually triggered when an agreed number of homes are built and occupied.

But try tracking them. There’s nothing on North Yorkshire Council’s website detailing payments for each development and nobody to contact.

Mr Kendall’s frustration at seeking answers led to an absurd scenario: “I walk my dog and I’d count which houses had curtains up so they were occupied, and there was a trigger point. And when people moved in, I’d knock on the door and ask whether they’d been given their £500 voucher as a new resident, and they’d go ‘what?’.”

‘Not transparent’

We sought answers from Mr Kendall’s North Yorkshire councillor, Liberal Democrat Barbara Brodigan.

Cllr Brodigan says councillors are kept informed of Section 106 payments for things like playgrounds, green spaces and cemeteries twice a year but not for bigger matters such as bus services and money for schools.

The only reference to Bishop’s Glade in her last update was about the contribution to the upkeep of two cemeteries.

There was nothing about the bus service to the city centre. 

Accountability is murky. For example, a new bus service was recently introduced from Clotherholme Road to the centre of Ripon. Is this the fabled £500,000 bus service mentioned in the Section 106 supposed to link Bishop’s Glade to Ripon city centre? The bus doesn’t actually go into Bishop’s Glade but the stop is relatively close.

“There is a bus service that goes around the city, but I haven’t established if that is funded by the Harron Homes development,” admits Cllr Brodigan.

Cycling pledges

One item in the Section 106 agreement that, as a keen cyclist, leapt out at Mr Kendall was money for a “cycling study” so he started negotiations with local schools about constructing a cycle path linking the schools and Bishop’s Glade.

Eventually, after consultations with North Yorkshire Council, the idea metamorphosed into a Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan. There are plans for a cycle path between Ripon and Fountains Abbey but, Mr Kendall laments, it is still on the drawing board. “I’ve been fighting for this for five years. But it’s painfully slow.”

In a statement, Harron Homes Yorkshire said it had made all “required financial contributions” under the Section 106 agreement, including for outdoor sports provision, a school travel plan and improvement to public footpaths.

Travel vouchers worth £500 were made available to all residents, the company said, and issued to those who applied.

In addition, £500,000 for the bus service, paid in four instalments, was delivered “some time ago”. But when we asked the council, it said the developer had paid three of four bus instalments worth a final total of £375,000.

In response to a Stray Ferret freedom of information request, the council said the funding had gone to support an existing bus service that doesn’t go into the estate, rather than to establish a new one as promised by the Section 106 agreement. Confusion reigns.

The council said the Section 106 agreement gives it 10 years from the date of the last payment of each contribution to spend the money.

Just £44,124 was spent on all Section 106 mitigations in the entire Harrogate area in 2023/4.

Mr Kendall says there’s something fundamentally wrong. “It’s pure administrative mismanagement of public funds; it's opportunity missed and wasted; it's poor communication; it's councils’ losing focus and being unable to see the wood for the trees – even if they've been cut down to build houses.”

This year's Section 106 agreement for the nearby 1,300-home Clotherholme scheme listed payments of £2.7 million for a new primary school, £1.9 million for secondary education provision and £1.07 million for local healthcare.

Can Ripon residents have any faith these will be delivered - and how will they even be able to check?

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