Agenda item

Members of the public may ask questions or make statements at this meeting if they have given notice and supplied the text to David Smith, Senior Democratic Services Officer, democraticservices.central@northyorks.gov.uk by midday on Tuesday, 14 January 2025. Each speaker should limit themselves to 3 minutes on any item.

 

Members of the public who have given notice will be invited to speak -

 

·        at this point in the meeting if their questions/statements relate to matters which are not otherwise on the agenda (subject to an overall time limit of 30 minutes)

 

·        when the relevant agenda item is being considered if they wish to speak on a matter which is on the agenda for this meeting.

 

If you are exercising your right to speak at this meeting, but do not wish to be recorded, please inform the Chairman who will instruct anyone who may be taking a recording to cease while you speak.

 

Three public statements were received before the deadline of Tuesday 14 January 2025.

 

1) An individual submitted a public statement but was unable to attend the meeting and so they will receive a response in writing.

 

2) Councillor Peter Baumann of Sherburn In Elmet Town Council made the following statement.

 

Thank you, Chair & Councillors.

           

I am speaking to you today as Chair of Sherburn Town Council to express our concerns about the recommendation to cease work on the Selby Local Plan.

           

The Selby Local Plan has had significant time, effort, and financial investment. Halting it now risks devaluing these efforts and would undermine the hard work of local councils, community groups and residents who have invested in shaping their communities’ futures. It risks eroding public confidence in the planning process, too — residents have engaged in consultations, provided feedback, and invested time believing their voices would shape the Local Plan. Abandoning the Plan has the potential to send a message that their input holds little value, discouraging future participation in planning processes.

 

It may also lead to parish and town councils, including ours, having to cease work on their own Neighbourhood Development Plans and possibly repay grant funding as a result of the failure to produce a Plan. In Sherburn alone, we have spent over £5,000 on our NDP so far and have held several consultations with the community, in good faith that it would align with the Selby Local Plan.

 

Selby’s Local Plan has taken over 5 years to get to this stage, but it is now at the point where it is sufficiently advanced that both developers and the planning department recognise its weight. To scrap it risks creating a vacuum in the planning system, potentially for several years whilst the North Yorkshire Local Plan is progressed, leaving residents and councils without a clear framework for managing development. If developers get wind that this Committee and North Yorkshire Council are set to abandon it, they will exploit that uncertainty. It will become incredibly difficult to argue that any weight should be afforded to the policies and the land allocations within. Speculative applications will become harder to resist, undermining the ability to deliver strategic, sustainable and community-led growth.

 

Sherburn knows from experience the damage this can cause, placing a severe strain on infrastructure, from schools to healthcare to transport. Without a clear strategic plan, there is no guarantee that future developments will come with the infrastructure improvements we so desperately need.

 

Finally, while I recognise the challenges imposed by the revised NPPF in terms of housing allocation and 5-year supply, the worst possible outcome would be to have no plan in place—emerging or otherwise. Without a Plan, you risk leaving communities vulnerable to ad-hoc, uncoordinated development, undermining efforts to deliver sustainable growth and the associated essential infrastructure. A clear framework, even one still in progress, is far better than none at all.

 

For these reasons, we urge the Committee to reject the recommendation to halt progress on the Selby Local Plan. Instead, we ask that you complete and adopt it, ensuring a strategic framework is in place to guide development and protect our communities until the North Yorkshire Local Plan is ready.

 

An Officer response was provided which raised the following points.

·        The Council has worked and will continue to work with a range of evidence and stakeholders as the NYC Local Plan progresses.

·        If the Selby Local Plan is halted, the current policies will hold no weight, but the evidence base may still be given appropriate weight when making decisions about specific sites. The evidence base will be valuable, as it will be rolled into the NYC Local Plan.

·        The NYC Local Plan is progressing and a public consultation on the issues and options will take place soon.

·        Neighbourhood Plans may need additional work to ensure that they are consistent with the existing Local Plan, however this does not mean that they must be stopped.

·        If work on the Selby Local Plan is not ceased, there still won’t be a 5-year supply.

 

 

3) Councillor Patrick Tunney of Tadcaster Town Council made the following statement.

                                

            Thank you Chair.

 

I think we all acknowledge and understand what’s happened with the NPPF and the reasons behind this Council dropping its Local Plan. I am a resident of Tadcaster, and I have been for 30 years, and what has really concerned me is that there has been a behind the scenes, closed doors, conversation taking place with the stakeholders in Tadcaster with no involvement of the constituents of the community.

 

This conversation, dialogue or discussion is proposed to continue during the development of the now North Yorkshire Plan. As a resident, I feel that the openness and ability for the community to understand what is happening behind the scenes needs to be clearer.

 

There is sympathy for the objectives of the discussions, but there are elements in the Tadcaster section of the plan that do no match with the objectives of the majority of the residents in the town. The development of the central car park and the proposal for an underground car park are complete nogoers. The two things cannot go together, and as I understand it, the continuing dialogue is going to be to allow for the two things to go ahead. They are incompatible.

 

An Officer response was provided which raised the following points:

·        The Council works with a wide range of stakeholders, landowners, developers, and site-promoters whilst producing local plans.

·        Individual schemes will be investigated as and when they arise.