Eco-development could be catalyst for green housing in Harrogate district

There are hopes nine ‘eco-homes’ that could be built near Knaresborough will be a catalyst for greener housebuilding in the Harrogate district.

Ben Holmes, from Birstwith, has submitted a planning application to Harrogate Borough Council for the cutting-edge development, which would be built to strict environmental standards and include solar panels, air-source heat pumps and super-tight insulation.

There would even be a communal vegetable garden to reduce the need to drive to shops.

A different model

Mr Holmes’ proposed scheme for York Road in Flaxby would be a community self-build development, which is a different model of housebuilding from what is usually seen.

If he is granted planning permission, he will install infrastructure, such as paths, water, drainage and a communal area, on the site.

He will then sell each of the nine plots to people who want to build their own home. The buyers then hire an architect and builder and design a home to suit their family’s needs.

Mr Holmes’ said this allowed for a customisable approach rather than buying identikit cookie-cutter homes on a large estate.

He said:

“You see these houses and they’ve all got their gas boilers. It is wrong way to build houses. Your big developers get as many homes on as possible and there is a lack of variation and creativity. It is soulless.

“There is a different way of building houses.”

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Lower energy bills

Harrogate Borough Council has a register of about 200 people who want to build their own home. Mr Holmes said there is an appetite in the district who people who want to have more of a say in how their home is built.

Anyone buying a plot to build their home will have to abide by a framework of environmental rules.

This includes Passivhaus certification and the Home Quality Mark from BRE.

Developed in Germany in the 1990s, Passivhaus is seen as a game-changer for low-carbon housing. It’s an innovative design code that prioritises insulation so that a home doesn’t need any heating or cooling at all, resulting in minimal energy bills.

There is only a handful of Passivhaus homes in the district, including the Larners’ house on Bogs Lane in Harrogate.

Mr Holmes also said the houses may be factory-built, bypassing much of the polluting construction process that comes with traditional bricks and mortar homes.

He added:

“Hopefully this site will act as a catalyst for the area to build more Passivhaus. It’s a high bar to get to that standard.”

Lost planning appeals have cost Harrogate district taxpayers £209,000 in legal fees

Planning appeals lost by Harrogate Borough Council have cost taxpayers almost a quarter of a million pounds in legal fees over the last nine years, it has been revealed.

Figures obtained by the Local Democracy Reporting Service show the council has spent £209,411 on lawyers plus £15,765 on covering developers’ costs when being found guilty of “unreasonable behaviour” in unsuccessful legal battles over where new homes and businesses should be built.

The findings have prompted questions over how willing the Conservative-run council is to take on developers and why third-party lawyers are sometimes used over in-house legal teams.

It also comes at a time when the authority is waiting to hear how much it will have to pay developers behind plans for a Starbucks drive-thru on Wetherby Road which was approved by the government’s planning inspectorate at an appeal in June.

Councillor Pat Marsh, leader of the Liberal Democrats and a long-serving member of the council’s planning committee, previously expressed her disappointment over a decision by council officers not to contest the Starbucks appeal and instead leave it to residents.

She has now said:

“The council should be prepared to defend the decisions using staff at an appeal, after all they are the qualified staff with local knowledge, what could be better.

“Every time they employ outside help it also adds to the cost.

“And even when they refuse to defend members’ decisions, as they did with the Starbucks application, they still had costs awarded against them so it would have been better for them to at least defend the council’s decision.”

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Councillor Marsh also took aim at the “unfair” planning system which allows appeals to be lodged by developers, but not by councils or residents.

She added:

“Why should developers have the upper hand? Why not a more level playing field? You never see a poor developer but you can see poor, underfunded councils.

“The planning system is very unfair and the balance is on the side of the large developers, in particular, those with the biggest purse.

“Appeals are costly and councillors are aware that it is council tax payers money that is at risk so would only proceed if they truly felt they were making the right decision for their community.

“There have been successes and also failures, but that is the cost of decision-making.”

Flaxby costs

Legal costs are only made against the council if it is found to have acted “unreasonably” when making planning decisions.

These costs are also made regardless of whether the council has won or lost an appeal, meaning successful appeals can also prove costly.

Last year, the council was successful in an appeal against rejected plans for 2,750 homes at the former Flaxby Park golf course, but spent £57,360 on external legal teams and paid £17,000 to cover a proportion of the developer’s costs.

These figures are not included in the total £225,176 spent over the last nine years because this sum only focuses on lost appeals.

Defending its record, the council said the majority of appeals made against it are unsuccessful, with 80% of applications referred to the planning inspectorate over the last two years resulting in defeat for the developers.

A council spokesperson said:

“This is positive as, by and large, the inspectorate has noted that our recommendations and decisions align with national and local policies.

“Costs would only be awarded to the council if it had deemed the actions of the applicant to be unreasonable, had made an application to the planning inspectorate and this had been successful.

“This only occurs in a very small number of cases.

“It is inevitably disappointing for the actions of the council to be judged as unreasonable. We work hard to ensure such occurrences do not occur, and to learn from the rare examples where a costs award is made.”

When has the council paid legal costs to developers at lost appeals?

And how much has been paid to external legal teams?

£7.7m upgrade of junction 47 on A1(M) delayed by two months

A £7.7 million project to upgrade junction 47 on the A1(M) at Flaxby has been delayed and is now scheduled to end in December.

Work began at the start of September last year to widen slip roads and install traffic lights to prevent vehicles queueing.

The project, carried out by contractors Farrans Construction on behalf of North Yorkshire County Council, also involves upgrading the road network just off the junction.

It was due to end shortly but the completion date has been pushed back two months due to “unforeseen ground conditions”.

Barrie Mason, assistant director highways and transportation at North Yorkshire County Council, said:

“Work to upgrade junction 47 on the A1(M) is progressing well and when complete will address congestion, improve road safety and support sustainable development in Harrogate and Knaresborough, as well as supporting the county council’s objective of improving east-west connections across North Yorkshire.

“Unforeseen ground conditions have required extra work on the southbound on-slip carriageway and this has delayed the scheme.

“The original planned completion date of late September or early October has been revised to December this year.”

The project is being funded by the county council with £2.47m from the government’s Local Growth Fund along with contributions from Highways England and developer Forward Investment LLP.

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£50,000 bid to look into Knaresborough to Flaxby cycle route

North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) is proposing to build a 7km segregated walking and cycling route between Knaresborough and the new Flaxby Green Park.

The county council has bid for £1.55million from the government’s Active Travel Fund to develop four schemes in North Yorkshire that improve walking and cycling infrastructure.

It proposes spending £50,000 on a feasibility study for the proposed route, which would run alongside the railway line and connect the town to Flaxby Green Park, a new employment site that is set to open on the junction of the A59 and A1.

The council said it would link to wider plans to build a cycle route all the way to York.

If NYCC decided to move forward with the scheme, it would have to bid for more money from government. An NYCC spokesman said the estimated costs of the route are unknown at this early stage.

The other scheme in the Harrogate district is to the west of Ripon where the council proposes to spend £550,000 on footway widening, crossing facilities and traffic calming measures.

Two other proposals are road improvements in Craven and a new walking/cycleway between Helmsley and Kirkbymoorside.

A decision on whether the council has been successful in its bid is expected in the autumn and funds must be spent before March 2023.

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It is not the first time NYCC has bid for money from the Active Travel Fund.

Ministers awarded £1,011,750 last year to help fund three potential schemes in Harrogate plus one in Whitby, despite the authority bidding for more.

It includes plans for cycle lanes and junction upgrades on the A59 between Harrogate and Knaresborough, as well as a scheme on Victoria Avenue in the town centre.

Meanwhile, a proposal to make Oatlands Drive more friendly to cyclists met with fierce backlash from local residents.

The plan originally included a scheme to make the whole of Oatlands Drive one-way. However, this was dropped in March after 57% of respondents to a council consultation opposed it.

The scheme moved forward and included making nearby St Winifred’s Road and St Hilda’s Road one-way, but this was similarly unpopular with residents.

In May, the council decided to withdraw the scheme altogether from its bid.

Instead, the council has commissioned an ‘Oatlands Constituency Feasibility Study’, which it says will “reassess opportunities” for infrastructure improvements across a wider area than the government scheme allows.

Harrogate council’s judicial review bill amounted to £74,000

Harrogate Borough Council has revealed it paid Flaxby Park £17,000 in legal costs after last year’s judicial review between the two parties.

The sum is in addition to the £57,360 the council spent on its own legal fees to contest the case.

It means the council’s full legal bill for the long-running saga amounted to £74,360.

The developer brought the judicial review after the council opted for a site at Green Hammerton over Flaxby as the location for a new 3,000-home settlement in the district. It claimed the process was flawed.

At October’s High Court hearing, Mr Justice Holgate ruled in the council’s favour by saying it did not have to make the decision again.

But he ordered the council to pay 15% of Flaxby’s legal costs because it failed to adequately consider an environmental assessment of alternative locations for the settlement.

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The council initially refused to say how much it had spent on legal fees.

The Stray Ferret sent a request under the Freedom of Information Act for the information but the council said it was exempt from disclosure because its lawyers’ legal fees should remain private.

We requested an internal review of this decision. Joanne Barclay, acting chief solicitor for corporate services, overturned the council’s decision and revealed the fee paid.

Today’s revelation of the sum paid to Flaxby means the full legal cost of the review is finally known.

Plans in for 2,000-job business park near Knaresborough

The developers behind a new business park near Knaresborough that could create up to 2,000 jobs have formally submitted proposals.

Opus North and Bridges Fund Management have sent plans to Harrogate Borough Council to transform a 45-acre site into a mixed-use development designed to support offices, logistics operators and tech firms.

The site – to be called Harrogate 47 – is located at Flaxby near junction 47 of the A1(M) and was acquired by the developers in October last year.

It is allocated as the main strategic employment site in the council’s Local Plan and already has existing planning permission for more than half a million square feet of employment space.

The new plans include up to 130,000 sq ft of office accommodation, about 75,000 sq ft of tech starter units and approximately 430,000 sq ft for logistics and warehouses.

A spokesperson for the developers said the existing planning permission allows for the commencement of the site’s enabling works so it can be made “oven-ready” for the main construction to start as soon as the new consent is granted.

Guy Bowden, a partner at Bridges Fund Management, added:

“As Harrogate 47 is such an important site with immense potential to make a significant economic contribution to the local area, we are keen to maintain momentum and as such are commencing preparatory works.

“The work being undertaken will ensure that the plots are ready for construction to begin, which could be as early as summer 2021, and our appointed agents are already in detailed discussions with potential occupiers who have expressed an interest in the scheme.”

The appointed industrial agents for Harrogate 47 are CBRE and Gent Visick, with the office enquiries directed to the office agency teams at CBRE.

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Oliver Freer, from CBRE’s northern planning team, which prepared the planning application, said:

“The new masterplan for Junction 47 responds to the market demand for employment accommodation for office, hi-tech/hybrid and logistics uses in this location, and is in accordance with the land allocation of the site.

“A successful consent would allow much-needed commercial space to be delivered, enabling local companies to stay and attracting new inward investment into the district, whilst unlocking the potential for some 2,000 new local jobs.”

Ryan Unsworth, development director of Opus North, added:

“We have been working hard with our appointed consultancy team and key stakeholders since we acquired the site to progress a masterplan that would maximise the job-creating potential of the site whilst addressing current and anticipated regional demand for sustainable office and industrial accommodation.

“We are confident that our application captures these aspects and look forward to seeing the initial works start on site to facilitate development.”

Journalist’s book reveals district’s secret wartime sites

An author from Bishop Monkton has written a new book all about the secret sites built during the Second World War to keep the country going.

Former BBC journalist and author Colin Philpott’s book tells the stories of places across the country, including the Harrogate district, that were built and used during the Second World War.

Between 1939 and 1945 standard buildings became spy bases, interrogations centres and even retreats for the Royal family.

The book describes a secret food depot near Flaxby. The food storage facility was one of 43 built across the country to store food in case the country’s supply lines across the Atlantic were cut off.

The site near the Knaresborough-York railway line is still standing now but as a distribution depot.

Another site locally was the secret aircraft factory built next to what is now Leeds-Bradford Airport. At the time it was the largest single-span factory space in Europe.

Hundreds of Lancaster Bombers were built on site. It is now Leeds-Bradford Airport Industrial Estate.

Colin Philpott

Colin Philpott

Mr Philpott said:

“What is fascinating about the story of secret sites in WW2 Britain is that so many were ‘hidden in plain sight’. Some were underground bunkers but most were above ground and relied on a combination of camouflage, deception and secrecy.

“‘In virtually every part of the country, including around Harrogate, you can pass by Second World War sites vital to the war effort without realising they’re there.”

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Mr Philpott will talk to adult learners from Rossett School about his new book in a virtual event on February 22.

 

Plans submitted for 400-home eco-resort at Flaxby

The developer that wanted to build 3,000 homes on the former Flaxby golf course has now submitted plans for a 400-lodge eco-resort on the site.

The Stray Ferret reported in November that Flaxby Park Ltd was considering an eco-resort as an alternative scheme for the site close to the A1.

It has now submitted plans to Harrogate Borough Council and claims the project could generate £53m a year of visitor spending and employ 460 full-time staff.

According to documents filed with the planning application, the eco-lodges are “intended to attract the most discerning visitors” and would have a focus on sustainability.

The plans also include a hotel, outdoor swimming pool, spa and sports area as well as a pub/cafe, farm shop, gift shop and activity hub.

The documents say the “driving principle” behind the resort is to allow families to “reconnect with nature” in “an ecologically rich environment” using renewable energy. They add:

“The development of this unique, environmentally conscious eco-lodge holiday complex would generate significant benefits for the local economy and that of the wider region.”

The application accepts noise from the A1(M) “may be audible in certain areas of the site” but says trees will help to minimise the impact. It adds:

“Overall, the scheme proposed will promote a sustainable tourism and leisure development that will considerably strengthen the offer within the district.”

If planning permission is granted the developer says the resort could be built by 2024.

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An aerial view of the proposed resort.

The site of the former Flaxby golf course has had a tumultuous recent history.

There were plans to build a £7m, 300-bedroom five-star hotel on the site but the company behind the scheme filed for bankruptcy.

Current owner Flaxby Park Ltd bought the site in 2015 and hoped to build 3,000 homes but its hopes were dashed when Harrogate Borough Council chose Green Hammerton and Cattal as the location for the homes instead.

The controversial decision came to a head in October when Flaxby Park Ltd and Harrogate Borough Council contested a judicial review in London’s High Court.

The judge ruled the council’s decision to choose Green Hammerton and Cattal over Flaxby did not have to be made again.

Harrogate council U-turn reveals Flaxby legal costs

Harrogate Borough Council has confirmed it spent £57,360 on legal fees for the Flaxby judicial review, after initially refusing to reveal the figure.

The Stray Ferret sent the council a request under the Freedom of Information Act asking how much it had spent on the case, which was heard at the High Court in London in October.

But the council said the information was exempt from disclosure because its lawyers’ legal fees should remain private.

We requested an internal review of this decision. Joanne Barclay, acting chief solicitor for corporate services, has now overturned the council’s decision not to disclose and revealed the fee it paid.

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She wrote:

I have reviewed this matter and I consider that the legal fees relating to the Flaxby Park Limited case should be disclosed.

“Harrogate Borough Council has spent £57,360 on legal fees regarding Flaxby Park Limited’s judicial review. At the time, the Council responded to your EIR request, it was considered to be reasonable not to release information relating to third parties.

“However, upon further consideration the Council has decided that this information should be disclosed.”

During October’s judicial review, the judge, Mr Justice Holgate, rejected a request by the council to be spared costs. He also ruled the council should pay 15% of Flaxby’s costs.

A spokesperson for Flaxby previously told the Stray Ferret 15% would amount to a “significant five-figure sum”.

Harrogate council refuses to reveal High Court legal costs

Harrogate Borough Council has refused to reveal its legal costs for the recent three-day judicial review in London’s High Court.

The Stray Ferret sent the council a request under the Freedom of Information Act asking how much it had spent on legal fees for the case against property developer Flaxby Park.

But the council said the information was exempt from disclosure because its lawyers’ legal fees should remain private.

The council reply said:

“The counsel fees relate to the individual’s private life because counsel is a self-employed individual.

“Counsel would have the reasonable expectation that their personal data, their final salary for work done, is not disclosed into the public domain.

“There is a general expectation of privacy when submitting invoices for payment concerned with payment of salaries.”

Paul Brown QC, joint head of chambers at law firm Landmark Chambers, represented the council at October’s hearing.

Mr Brown is a local government specialist who has represented several councils at the High Court and Court of Appeal.

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During October’s judicial review, the judge, Mr Justice Holgate, rejected a request by the council to be spared costs. He also ruled the council should pay 15 per cent of Flaxby’s costs.

A spokesperson for Flaxby previously told the Stray Ferret 15% would amount to a “significant five-figure sum”.

But the council said Flaxby had not yet submitted a claim for costs.

Flaxby claimed the council’s decision to choose Green Hammerton and Cattal rather than Flaxby as the site of a new 3,000-home settlement was based on a flawed process.

Mr Holgate ruled in the council’s favour by saying the decision did not have to be made again.

But the judge ordered the council to vote again on its Local Plan to correct a legal flaw.

The Stray Ferret has requested an internal review of the council’s decision. This should be completed in 40 working days.