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18
Dec
Secretary of State intervenes over Harrogate Spring Water expansion plans
The government has blocked North Yorkshire Council from approving Harrogate Spring Water’s expansion plans so it can decide whether to determine the application itself.
Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, is considering whether to call-in the application.
His department has written to the council saying:
The Secretary of State hereby directs your council not to grant permission on this application without specific authorisation. This direction is issued to enable him to consider whether he should direct under Section 77 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that the application should be referred to him for determination.
The letter adds the direction does not “prevent your council from considering the application, forming a view as to the merits or, if they are so minded, refusing permission”.
But it cannot grant approval until Mr Reed decides whether to step-in.
Harrogate Spring Water, which is owned by French multinational Danone, wants to fell 500 trees at its headquarters on Harlow Moor Road to make space to expand its bottling factory.
It says the move would create 50 jobs and provide a £2.3 million annual local economic boost. The company has also agreed to plant 3,000 trees elsewhere, but the plans have proved hugely controversial.
Tom Gordon MP
MP objection
Councillors deferred a decision in October after more than 1,000 objections were received.
This month Tom Gordon, the Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough who opposes the expansion, wrote to Mr Reed urging him to intervene.
Mr Gordon said the failure to carry out an environmental impact assessment on the application “appears to be a fundamental breach of planning law”.
He added:
“This is a statutory requirement for developments with significant environmental impacts, and chopping down hundreds of trees clearly meets that threshold. The Secretary of State must intervene to ensure the process is lawful and to restore public confidence in the integrity of the planning system.”
Protestors at October's planning meeting.
'Residents deserve clear answers'
Councillor Michael Schofield, the Green Party councillor whose Harlow and St Georges division includes the Harrogate Spring Water site, also questioned why an environmental impact assessment had not been carried out.
Cllr Schofield said:
“Given the scale of the proposal and the number of missing ecological and hydrological assessments, I simply do not see how anyone can have confidence that all environmental impacts have been properly considered. Residents deserve clear answers — and right now, many of those answers are missing.”
Harrogate Spring Water received outline permission for the scheme in 2017, which means the principle of development has been established. But its reserved matters planning application, covering issues such as access, landscaping and design, still needs approval before the development can proceed.
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