Duchy’s plans to build 160 homes in village bite dust

The Duchy – which is custodian of 18,700 hectares across England and Wales and provides the sovereign of the day with a source of income independent from Government and the public purse – has been planning for years to build 159 homes on five different sites around Cloughton, near Scarborough.

But yesterday an application for outline permission was rejected at a meeting of Scarborough Borough Council’s planning committee.

As revealed by the Yorkshire Post last week, borough planning officers had already recommended refusal, claiming that the buildings would harm the landscape of the village and send its population rocketing by as much as 82 per cent.