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24
Oct 2023
North Yorkshire Council set to lobby government for water quality measures
North Yorkshire Council looks set to write to the government calling for fundamental reform of the planning system to improve the county’s rivers, watercourses and coastline.
The Conservative-run council will consider pressing Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Thérèse Coffey, to make a series of changes to the National Planning Policy Framework to avert pollution as a result of new development.
The proposal has been approved by the authority’s transport, economy and environment scrutiny committee as a recommendation to be considered at a full meeting of the authority next month, alongside a series of other proposals to get to grips with water pollution in the county.
The meeting heard councillors raise serious concerns over water pollution in rivers such as the Swale and Ure, which run through Rishi Sunak’s constituency, as well as the county’s coastal waters, where marine life has repeatedly been impacted by a mystery issue in the water.
Liberal Democrat councillor Steve Mason told the committee the proposals needed bolstering by national policy to ensure developers could not use devices such as viability tests to avoid consideration of water issues.
He said:
Cllr Hannah Gostlow, whose division includes Knaresborough and the River Nidd, which saw 870 sewage dump incidents last year, said lobbying government would be viewed as “a major step” by the authority.
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The proposed measures will aim to establish what the impacts and receptors are in relation to any development.
The meeting heard neither Local Plan policies nor national framework have the capacity to extend consideration in planning decisions to where foul water is in the main sewer, in terms of how it is treated.
Councillors were told a motion of council, to make water issues a “material planning consideration” would be of limited weight, and were they to be treated as having more weight in a development decision than the Local Plan or national framework, the decision could be challenged by developers at appeal.
Councillors from a range of political groups told the meeting there was a clear mandate to seek to have more robust engagement with water firms “to fully understand capacity constraints and opportunities”.
It is hoped making water firms statutory consultees in planning decisions, in the same way as exists for flooding and highways authorities, would allow the companies to embed expanding their capacity and technologies to reduce the incidence of flooding, whilst accommodating increased usage.
After the meeting, the council’s leader, Cllr Carl Les, said he sympathised with proposals to make water firms statutory consultees in planning decisions.
He said he believed councillors would all support lobbying the government to enable water firms to levy infrastructure charges on property developers to enable them to finance improving the capacity of systems such as sewage.
When asked whether the government should introduce a tougher system of fines for pollution breaches, Cllr Les said he was concerned water users would face increased charges to cover the firms’ fines.
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