The beeping sound of lorries and diggers reversing fills the air. Mud covers the street. Planning application notices hang like baubles from lamp posts.

Welcome to Kingsley Road, a once quiet rural area on the edge of Harrogate that has become a permanent building site.

Some 600 homes are at various stages of construction in the nearby area. Work started years ago and shows no sign of ending.

On Tuesday, Harrogate Borough Council‘s planning committee is expected to approve a sixth development – Persimmon’s application for 162 homes in a field on Kingsley Drive. Some locals plan to demonstrate at the council offices in the hope of persuading the Conservative-controlled planning committee to reject the scheme.

Gary Tremble, pictured where more development is due to take place.

Gary Tremble, who lives on Kingsley Road, is at the forefront of local resistance. He is a member of Kingsley Ward Action Group, which was set up in 2019 because “we soon realised we needed to work together”.

By his own admission, Mr Tremble is a “pain in the arse campaigner” who bombards councillors of all political colours with emails complaining about uncovered lorries, the state of the roads, road safety and anything else that concerns people who live in the area. He says some Greens and Liberal Democrats “have been helpful” but the bulldozers keep coming. He says:

“There’s a lot of anger on this street and it will get worse if people keep ignoring us.

“I have to take time off otherwise I get angry all the time. But then you walk out the door and see another truck going past at 40mph.”

The proposed road closure leading to Bogs Lane

The homes are being built in a residential area off the already-congested Knaresborough Road. North Yorkshire County Council has now applied to block the through-route on to Bogs Lane, which some welcome on the grounds it will reduce local traffic. Others say it will just drive more vehicles on to Knaresborough Road.

All you can see in the Kingsley area is houses.

Mr Tremble says:

“The main issue is there is no infrastructure. You can’t build several hundred homes with no community centre, dentist or shop.”

He says if the Persimmon development is approved and more green land between Starbeck and Bilton is concreted over, many people will have had enough and look to move.

Read more:

• Kingsley residents call for halt to new housing decisions
• Council recommends controversial Kingsley Farm homes be approved

Other local people feel equally strongly. Darren Long says:

“It literally feels like we’re given more bad news on a daily basis. It’s now seven years since construction started on the first Barratt’s development and it shows no signs of stopping. It’s so sad that this has been allowed to happen.

“We were so excited to move here in 2017. It’s miserable living here now. Living with the constant construction traffic, proposed road closures, one way systems and the horrific traffic.”

Peter Nolan, who has lived in the Kingsley area for 49 years, says Harrogate Borough Council “should be ashamed of the state they have let this once quiet area get into”. He adds:

“I’ve never ever in all my years had to queue half way along Kingsley Road in a morning but now I quite often spend 20 minutes trying to get out onto Knaresborough Road.”

Resident Dee Downton added:

“I am more concerned about the effect of the normal day-to-day basics that impact the everyday person getting to their destinations or commute to work, the impact on air quality because it’s just one constant traffic jam, the impact when ambulances can’t get through, the danger to pedestrians crossing because a gap in the traffic is seen and a vehicle acts quickly but fails to see someone crossing the road.”

Developers have targeted Kingsley because the land is allocated for development on the Harrogate district Local Plan 2014-35, which outlines where development can take place,

They say the schemes bring much-needed housing to Harrogate.

But those living in the area are less enthusiastic. Anonymous posters appeared on the street recently urging locals to legally double park on the pavement to prevent developers’ lorries from passing.

Mr Tremble says such anger is understandable because feelings are reaching “boiling point”.

Andrew Hart, a postmaster in nearby Starbeck, sympathises and says the action group is “doing their best to right a massive wrong”, adding:

“I am appalled with the never ending chaos created by the developments and road closures along Kingsley. The whole infrastructure was never designed for this number of houses.

“We have ended up with serious health and safety issues, lack of local resources and a gridlocked Knaresborough Road and Starbeck.”

Tuesday’s planning committee can be watched live on Harrogate Borough Council’s YouTube page here.

Plans have been submitted to convert the upper floors of a Grade II listed building in Harrogate into flats.

Five-storey Mercer House towers above the adjoining Mercer Art Gallery in the Harrogate Conservation Area on Swan Road.

Colston Trustees Limited have applied to Harrogate Borough Council to change the use of the site from offices to residential and create two flats.

According to planning documents submitted to the council, the office space has been redundant for over a year, which could leave the building susceptible to water ingress.

The ground floor and basement of Mercer House are occupied by Paul Lown-owned clothing store Prey Four and are not included in the plans.

Mercer House is historically and architecturally significant due to its gable-fronted, white and blue appearance.

Read more:

• Developers plan 60 homes in Sharow
• Developer tables plan for 55 retirement homes in Kirk Hammerton
• Well known Harrogate clothing retailer moves to new premises

The application seeks to insert new doors, rooflights and an enlarged window. A design and access statement submitted as part of the proposal, says:

“Given the minor internal and external changes required to facilitate residential conversion at Mercer House, and the benefit to the long-term care and maintenance of having the upper floors in active use, this less than substantial harm is outweighed.”

It adds:

“The works, on balance, will both preserve and enhance the historic and architectural interests of Mercer House and special character of the Harrogate Conservation Area.”

An investigation by the Stray Ferret has uncovered how some of Britain’s biggest land promoters deliberately targeted Harrogate to exploit cheap land and high property prices.

Between 2014 and 2020 the district’s planning system was in disarray.

These failings made it easy for developers to get controversial housing schemes approved. The developers, knowing this, made speculative applications for thousands of homes across the district.

All this week, the Stray Ferret looks at the impact of six years of planning failings: thousands of extra cars on the roads, large detached houses prioritised over much-needed affordable homes for local people, and a lack of sustainable, environmentally friendly building.

Today, we examine how the Harrogate district became a target for opportunistic developers .

The draw of Harrogate

The Harrogate district is a prime place for money to be made in property.

It’s one of the most desirable places to live, often coming top in national property surveys. Just last month, Harrogate was named the ‘chic capital of the North’ by Tatler. It makes it very attractive to developers.

The latest figures put the average home at almost £360,000 – a whopping 13 times the average income for the district.

It is, according to the Harrogate Borough Council Housing Strategy 2019-2024, the least affordable area in the north of England.

It means home owning is out of reach for many low to middle income families caught in the Harrogate housing trap. There are more than 2,000 families in the district on the Housing Register living in unsuitable accommodation.

It’s not a question of Harrogate building too many properties. Rather, it’s too few of the right homes, in the right places, at the right price to meet local people’s need for affordable homes.

Planning failings

Every council has to put forward a 21-year plan to the Secretary of State for approval.The Planning Inspectorate examines local plans on the Secretary of State’s behalf to determine their suitability.

In 2014, the Planning Inspectorate advised Harrogate Borough Council  to withdraw its version of the Local Development Plan (or LDP 2014-2035).

The LDP sets out the council’s priorities and policies for land use. It defines where and how many homes can be built, where employment sites are located and what our town centre will become.

For a plan to be approved, it must demonstrate that it is well evidenced and meets local need. The plan must be in accordance with the National Planning Policy Framework and a raft of legislation, practice guidance and regulations.

Harrogate Borough Council withdrew its draft LDP at its first hearing on April 24, 2014, upon advice from the planning inspectorate.

The failed plan – years in the making – was deemed ‘inadequate’.

A letter from the Planning Inspectorate to Harrogate on April 29, 2014 explained that the evidence used in the plan was too out of date to be meaningful.

Harrogate was forced back to the drawing board.

Prior to its submission, Liberal Democrat leader councillor Pat Marsh had told the Yorkshire Post:

“I do not have confidence in anything to do with the plan, whether it be the actual allocation of homes, whether there is the necessary infrastructure in place to cope and how members will be able to decide on the final proposals which are still being finalised. I have been a councillor for 22 years, but I have never experienced anything quite like this. It is a complete shambles.”

Conservative councillor Alan Skidmore, who was appointed cabinet member for planning at HBC in 2012, publicly defended the plan at the time. Yet speaking to the Stray Ferret this year, he said he knew the plan that had been prepared was “absolute rubbish”.

“I was astonished. I delayed it as much as I could, much to the chagrin of certain planning officers. We were forced to submit it in the state it was in, because if we didn’t, the government would have taken steps against us.”

The local plan should have helped control where new housing was built

Land supply

Harrogate failed on another critical requirement. Councils must show that they have a supply of specific deliverable sites enough to provide five years’ worth of new housing (plus an appropriate buffer).

This is called the five-year land supply (5YLS).

In 2014, the council had more than two thousand families on the housing register.

Planning inspectors and developers surgically dissected Harrogate’s calculation that just 390 new market and affordable homes per annum was enough to meet housing need.

The figure had to be revised, and Harrogate employed a consultant, GL Hearn.

To meet the 5YLS, Harrogate had to find enough developers with land to deliver 1,050 completed homes a year.

As a result, the land earmarked for development within the plan was insufficient.

The perfect storm

Without an approved local plan and evidence of a five-year land supply, a condition called the ‘tilted balance in favour of presumption of approval’ was triggered which prioritised building houses.

In 2013, the Campaign for Rural England warned local government that a

“widespread failure to implement local plans left 175 local authorities (including Harrogate) vulnerable to ‘damaging development’”.

But the Federation of House Builders disagreed, saying:

‘‘Fears that the lack of a (local development) plan will lead to the untrammelled destruction of the countryside are overblown. Even where there is no Local Plan, development must still conform to the NPPF, which clearly sets out that development must be well located, well designed and sustainable.”

Harrogate Borough Council planners advised councillors from 2014 to 2018 that there was a ‘tilted balance’ in favour of approval on almost every major development regardless of whether the site was well located and sustainable.

For almost every major housing scheme, planning officers advised committee members to approve the application.

The planning committee did turn down some applications during that time, though, and the council successfully defended its decision at appeal.

A district vulnerable to promoters

Enter the land promoter: land promoters seek out land which could be ripe for housing and help the owner get outline planning permission before managing the onward sale to a developer.

In the Harrogate district, a hectare of agricultural land will fetch around £25,000 at the farmers’ auction.

As a development site with outline planning approval, the same land will realise between £1.2 and £2.3 million.

The promoter then takes a share of the land’s increased value when it’s sold.

Gladman Land is the promoter behind applications for nearly 1,500 properties in the district since 2014, including Harrogate, Boroughbridge, Killinghall and Knaresborough.

Co-founder David Gladman told the High Court in July 2016:

“We normally only target local authorities whose planning is in relative disarray and… either have no up-to-date local plan or, temporarily, they do not have a five-year supply of consented building plots.”

Even if the council refuses the application, it’s of no consequence.

Gladman Land stated that going to appeal was part of its business strategy, with a success rate of over 90%. They advertise themselves as one of the most successful land promoters in England.

It’s completely legal and was essentially a standard practice within the land promotion industry.

In 2016/17, Harrogate received the highest number of planning applications since records began.

The development at Crofters Green, Killinghall, was one of those passed at appeal. Click here to read more.

Strengthening position

By January 2019, Harrogate could demonstrate a robust 5YLS which tilted the balance in a different direction.

Harrogate Borough Council’s planning committee was advised to support an outline application by Gladman’s to build 175 houses on Bar Lane, Knaresborough.

The debate ran over several hours with councillors struggling to reach a consensus, despite officers’ recommendation to approve the proposal. Eventually, the committee deferred the application to planning officers to approve, subject to some details being finalised.

But just nine months later, on September 9, 2019, the same application returned to the planning committee who refused it against the advice of officers.

The advanced state of the local plan and a healthy 5YLS gave the planning committee the confidence to reject the proposal.

The local development plan was finally accepted by the planning inspectorate and adopted by HBC in May 2020 affording further protection against harmful development in the borough.

But the damage has been done to the fabric of our communities, and over the next week, the Stray Ferret will look at the impact that six years of planning dysfunction has had on the lives of local people.

Coming up

All this week, we look at the impact of a planning system in disarray. 

• Tomorrow: Local homes for local people? We speak to those who say they’ll never be able to buy in their home town. 
• Wednesday: Thousands of new homes – but where are the schools and doctors’ surgeries to support the people who live in them? 
• Thursday: More than 26,000 extra cars on the road: one local man says traffic is putting him out of business 
• Friday: Climate change: why the district’s new homes are already out of date when it comes to the environment