Agenda item

Members of the public may ask questions or make statements at this meeting if they have given notice and provided the text to Democratic Services Officer (details below) no later than midday on Tuesday, 24 March 2026, three working days before the day of the meeting. Each speaker should limit themselves to three minutes on any item. 

 

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

 

Question from Mike Potter

 

I’m Mike Potter, a project team member of Paths 4 Everyone.  We intend to deliver a 50-mile circular, market towns, active travel route in Ryedale.   I know that plans, strategies, consultations and protocols achieve nothing without delivery, which is why I stress that word.

 

I have a number of questions for you to mull over.

 

How many of those present drove here today?  Were the roads congested?  Would you have dared to cycle here even if the distance was reasonable?  How fast and aggressive was the traffic?  Or was it slow and congested?  What was the air quality like in the congested bits?  Will it be affordable for many people to fill their tank today?  Next month?  Is there a national costly epidemic of obesity, diabetes and associated health issues?  Is there a similarly massive epidemic of mental health problems nationwide?  Is climate change an existential threat, and what are we doing to mitigate it?  Are we doing it fast enough?  What’ll be the cost if we don’t?

 

And finally, if there was a network of safe active travel routes, would people use them to walk, wheel and cycle a lot more?  Even to school during that most dangerous and congested twice daily school-run time?

 

You may have noticed that during Covid, when car travel largely ceased and the roads cleared, that’s exactly what did happen.  Young, old and whole families took to the roads because, unusually, they felt safe.

 

North Yorkshire has a huge number of quiet lanes, many narrow and twisting, with poor visibility, yet they invariably have a 60mph speed limit.

 

A Quiet Lanes protocol was adopted about 20 years ago. A Speed Management Strategy was recently adopted. Hence, a programme of speed limit reviews will be carried out over approximately five years, ultimately covering all roads in the county.

 

Where will we be with climate change, mental and physical health, and petrol prices and availability in five years’ time?  Wouldn’t it be a good idea to deliver some safe quiet lanes rather more quickly, particularly those that could make up part of a unified safe active travel route such as our market towns circular?

 

What will you do to deliver?

 

Response from Assistant Director – highways and Infrastructure

 

Thank you for your question regarding the early delivery of Quiet Lanes, particularly those that could contribute to a coherent safe active travel route such as the proposed Market Towns Circular.

 

As noted, the Council has recently adopted the new Speed Management Strategy (SMS), which introduces a comprehensive programme of speed limit reviews across the county over a five-year period. This programme is a key dependency for progressing Quiet Lanes, as appropriate speed limits are a fundamental requirement for eligibility.

 

The Quiet Lanes protocol, however, was developed 15–20 years ago and does not fully reflect current policy direction, design standards, or the wider ambitions for active travel, safety, and climate action. Officers are therefore undertaking a review of the protocol to ensure it is fit for purpose before new designations can be made.

 

Delivery will depend on the outcomes of this protocol review, as well as alignment with the speed limit assessments being carried out under the SMS. Until these are in place, it would not be appropriate to designate routes prematurely. That said, we recognise the value of enabling safe active travel networks, including those that can strengthen opportunities for walking, wheeling and cycling between our market towns and rural communities. The review is being progressed with this in mind, and officers will provide further feedback as soon as the revised framework is ready.

 

We are committed to ensuring that the updated Quiet Lanes approach supports the Council’s wider goals for safety, health, climate, and rural connectivity, and that opportunities for earlier delivery, where justified and feasible, are fully explored once the review is complete.

 

Question from Simon Thackray

 

On 5 December, Members discussed concerns about Yorkshire Water, including the use of ‘Grampian style’ conditions on planning applications because of wastewater and sewerage infrastructure constraints.

 

The NYC Thirsk and Malton Area Committee and NYC CX raise concerns about the lack of wastewater treatment capacity in Malton and elsewhere. In Malton, these constraints have been known to the LPA since 2010, and the publication of the Ryedale Local Plan in 2013. EDM data has been available for the past five years, which shows excessive sewage spills into our local watercourses and clear evidence of lack of sewage treatment capacity in a very long list of towns and villages.

 

Re Malton: Yorkshire Water advised Ryedale District Council, in September 2010, that the Malton sewerage system lacked available treatment capacity. Yet, for the past 16 years, nothing has been done by the LPA to address the issue or press Yorkshire Water to invest. In that time, the number of houses approved and built in Malton and Norton has increased by 40t, with no increase in sewage treatment capacity.

 

Unfortunately, Ryedale District Council (and now North Yorkshire Council) has spent years defending Yorkshire Water and allowing it to evade its responsibilities. A shining example of collective failure being the continued operation of the Malton and Norton Pumping Plan, by which Yorkshire Water, North Yorkshire Council, and the Environment Agency are polluting the River Derwent with sewage and highway run-off as a means of flood alleviation.

 

In his Appeal decision for 200 houses at Peasey Hills, Malton, the Planning Inspector wrote:

 

7. “The Thirsk and Malton Area Planning Committee, at its meeting on 16 October 2025, considered that the application would have been refused for the following reasons: (vii) Insufficient capacity of the sewerage system to accept the proposed additional foul flows. Members raised concerns about both the cumulative impact from housing development on sewerage capacity along with concern about the weight to be given to new housing approvals, in light of housing land supply, and the deliverability of housing sites where Grampian style conditions were used owing to the uncertainty of the timescales for delivery.”

 

117. “Testimony was given by an interested person on the long standing and frequent sewage spills into the River Derwent and Yorkshire Water’s timeline for future improvements with investigations to be completed by 2030 and implementation of capacity improvements by 2035.”

 

131. “I consider that the condition sought [‘Grampian style’ condition] is justified in all respects.”

 

Update 1, Yorkshire Water, says Members discussed concerns about Yorkshire Water, including the use of ‘Grampian style’ conditions on planning applications because of wastewater and sewerage infrastructure constraints.

 

Question:

 

Assuming the Committee agrees with the Planning Inspector that the use of ‘Grampian-style’ conditions is “justified in all respects” to protect the environment from sewage pollution until Yorkshire Water has completed its necessary upgrades to its sewerage systems across North Yorkshire, does the Committee acknowledge that both Ryedale District Council, and North Yorkshire Council, are co-responsible for failing to ensure that the Statutory Sewerage Undertaker has upgraded its sewerage systems in a timely manner, to provide adequate sewage conveyance and treatment capacity relative to the sites allocated in the Ryedale Plan Sites Document published in 2019?

 

Response from the Head of Planning Policy and Place

 

The Ryedale Plan – Local Plan Strategy (2013) and Local Plan Sites Document (2019) were both independently examined and found sound. They were prepared in line with statutory requirements and in consultation with infrastructure providers, including Yorkshire Water. Although sewerage capacity was acknowledged as an important consideration, Yorkshire Water did not identify it as a fundamental constraint to development in the relevant settlements, nor request phasing. Imposing such restrictions without their direction could have raised soundness concerns at examination.

 

Yorkshire Water has only recently raised capacity concerns in relation to proposals for development. Grampian conditions are now being applied (where they can be justified and are necessary) to ensure appropriate infrastructure is delivered. For current applications, the council will reflect recent decisions and Yorkshire Water’s latest advice where such conditions are necessary.

 

The council will continue to work closely with Yorkshire Water and other utilities to secure timely infrastructure delivery, including through the preparation of the North Yorkshire Local Plan, to ensure that essential water infrastructure supports development now and into the future.

 

 

Mr Thackray had the following supplementary question

 

There is a letter from Yorkshire Water to the Head of Planning, Ryedale District Council on 13 September 2010 that specified the lack of sewage treatment capacity in Malton. With respect to what the officer has stated, if you read the Ryedale local plan strategy document, it has a list of designations of sewage treatment capacity for all the major locations, including Norton. I think everybody will understand a simple, one-word designation - ‘constraints’.

 

On 15 November 2023, North Yorkshire Council resolved to: "Ask all relevant water companies, from this date onwards, in its planning consultation responses for major developments, to clarify which treatment works will be managing the sewage; confirm that these treatment works have the additional capacity to take waste from agreed developments; and confirm whether they have the information available to assess the impact on the number or duration of sewage discharges into local rivers or seas, and, if they do have this information, to share it."

 

Has North Yorkshire Council received that confirmation?

 

Response from the Head of Development Management

 

We consult Yorkshire Water on major schemes to ensure that we have the necessary information to make planning decisions. In addition, we are currently undertaking improvements linked to a new IT system which will ensure that the points highlighted are fully addressed.