Calls to protect greenfield land in Yorkshire after hotel and business park plan withdrawn

Campaigners are urging North Yorkshire Council to extend the Thirsk and Sowerby Conservation Area to York Road following Calverts Carpets withdrawing a £16m development for livestock grazing fields to the south of Thirsk and east of Sowerby.

While there are no designated green belt rings of protection from development in the area, the authority’s planning officers are facing calls to draw up “ecological red lines” around market towns such as Thirsk to preserve popular walking routes, ecosystems and best quality farmland.

The calls come less than a year after the proposal for a 74-bedroom Travelodge hotel, a Starbucks-drive thru, a 40,000sq ft warehouse and showroom and 18,000sq ft of industrial units was unveiled for the land off the A170 York Road which had not been allocated in the recently approved Hambleton Local Plan.

Documents submitted with the application had suggested the development, close to Thirsk Auction Mart, would help create an out of town “business hub” with 30 full-time jobs.

However, it is understood planning officers had concluded the proposal would be unlikely to gain approval given the scale of likely non-compliance with the area’s adopted development blueprint.

The plan followed another controversial scheme, for a fuel station, a McDonald’s and a Costa drive-thru, food store and lorry park development on farmland being approved despite environmental concerns.

A previous planned development in the area had been rejected due “to significant adverse impact on the intrinsic openness of this undeveloped landscape” and the setting of Sowerby Flatts and the conservation area.

Campaigners say protecting the farmland, which is owned by the leading North Yorkshire flooring firm, would benefit the Cod Beck, a tributuary of the River Swale, as well as a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation lies to the west of the site.

They say the watercourse is already seeing numerous pollution incidents due to developments in the area.

David Tonge, of Thirsk Friends of the Earth, said: “If the Thirsk and Sowerby Conservation Are was extended up to York Road it would make future development very difficult.”

Thirsk councillor and deputy leader of North Yorkshire Council, Gareth Dadd added: “I would love to see that area protected, as I would have loved not to have seen McDonald’s there. It should never have been approved. It was sold to the planning committee on the basis of it creating more than 100 jobs. That was a flight of fancy.”