More new houses planned for Craven district

The part of the Yorkshire Dales ranked officially as the happiest place in Britain will have to contend with the building of around 230 new homes each year for the next decade and a half, its councillors have decided.
The Craven area has been named one of the best places to live.The Craven area has been named one of the best places to live.
The Craven area has been named one of the best places to live.

The Craven district, which takes in Skipton, Settle and a large swathe of the Dales National Park, will see more building than previously forecast but the figure will include 10 per cent fewer “affordable” properties.

The approval of the district’s “local plan” comes as the National Park Authority separately considers proposals to make more affordable homes available.

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Craven, which came top of the Government’s annual wellbeing survey this year, with a “happiness rating” of 8.3 out of 10, has been debating its housing strategy for months, with more than 900 comments received from residents.

Council lawyer Michael Bedford QC told councillors at an extraordinary meeting: “This plan will give the council the planning tools it needs to meet the needs of the area, whilst also respecting the environmental constraints of what is a very special place.”

A previous draft of the plan proposed that four in ten of the district’s new homes would have to be affordable – a label the Government defines as being made available to people whose needs are not met by the market.

But following representations from developers, the council has now agreed to a 30 per cent total. However, the overall number of new homes will increase to 4,600 by 2032.

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The Council leader, Richard Foster, told The Yorkshire Post: “The geography means that a lot of the sites are not straightforward, and a target of 40 per cent becomes unviable for developers. The process takes up time both for them and the council’s officers.

“What we don’t want to do is deter developers.”

He added: “We have slightly increased the overall number of properties but we have not added any new sites.

“I’m delighted that the plan is now ready for publication. It has been a very long process.”

The document will be subject to a final six week consultation in the new year before it is submitted for Government approval.

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It contains a raft of other proposals, including changes to the use of land east of the railway line in Skipton for a new primary school, a policy on specialist housing for older people and adjustments to housing numbers in Settle and Bentham following the closure of Rathmell primary school.

There are also changes to housing site allocations in Skipton, Settle and Bentham, and the area around Skipton Woods is to be designated as “local green space”.

Coun John Dawson, chairman of Craven’s spatial planning sub-committee, said: “This is the result of five years of research and policy development and we now feel we have a sound local plan.”

The Craven plan does not cover the area within the National Park boundary, whose authority in October urged builders and housing associations to consider putting up new homes within its protected area as it moved to address what it said was a housing “crisis” that had caused a mass exodus of young families from the area.

It told prospective builders that more open market housing “than ever before” would now be accepted.