Residents given hope in homes plan fight

Members of Harrogate Borough Council’s district development committee, which met to discuss a planning blueprint that is currently being put together, disagreed that a site at Cardale Park would be suitable for 680 homes.

The committee’s concerns will now be passed to the council’s cabinet committee where the planning blueprint will be further discussed. A decision will be made at a later date.

Coun Jim Clark, a member of the committee, said after the meeting: “We do not have the proper infrastructure and people thought that there were far too many homes.”

Terry Byrne, chairman of Harlow and Pannal Ash Residents’ Association welcomed the committee’s decision but said the fight was not over as a decision would not be made until a later meeting.

“We have always said that the scale of housing was too much for that part of the town simply because there’s no infrastructure, there’s only a minor road and no rail connections,” he said yesterday.

Harrogate Borough Council is putting together a blueprint, earmarking sites as being suitable for future development. A strategy is being put together to help build the numbers of homes predicted to be needed throughout the area over the coming years.

Planning bosses at the authority have previously said they have been hindered where to choose the sites due to a lack of vacant brownfield land. But they have claimed more would be available in the coming years and were still hopeful of hitting a target of building the homes on 70 per cent brownfield land.

The Harrogate district falls within the so-called Golden Triangle along with York and Leeds and includes some of the most sought-after postcodes in the North for househunters.