In depth: Is Harrogate's Local Plan failing one brick at a time and if so why?

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When it was finally adopted in 2020, backed by all of the town’s political parties, the Local Plan promised to be a blueprint for the future development of the Harrogate district - setting out areas where thousands of new homes and businesses should be built up until 2035 - as well as offering a set of guidelines on whether or not planning applications can be granted.

But, with a growing number of residents’ groups up in arms over what they claim is the wrong number of housing, of the wrong type at the wrong price and in the wrong places, are the wheels falling off Harrogate’s Local Plan?

Before Harrogate Borough Council won approval for this key component of the planning system from the Government’s Planning Inspectorate - after nearly six years of wrangling - the great fear was that the council was helpless to stand up to developers in the Government’s big push to address Britain’s housing crisis.

But since Harrogate’s Local Plan came into play two years ago, disatisfaction over the way things have gone has grown.

Opposition to the piecemeal nature of housing developments in the likes of the Kingsley area of Harrogate, Pannal Ash, Whinney Lane, Killinghall and Green Hammerton is now threatening to evolve into something different - a loss of faith in the Local Plan only two years after finally being introduced.

Howard West, chairman of Pannal and Burn Bridge Parish Council, who have complained about local authorities planning for what it says could be as many as 4,000 houses in the western part of Harrogate by 2035, said: “The current problem of a lack of infrastructure stems from the culpability of both North Yorkshire County Council and Harrogate Borough Council in allowing housing development without provision for adequate traffic handling.

“Addressing the effects of all the new housing on transport and traffic should have been completed before a digger made its first cut into any land for sites that will together be a new settlement to the west of Harrogate.”

Both local authorities argue that infrastructure needs will be addressed by the system.

They say the goal of creating thriving sustainable communities is covered by the Harrogate Local Plan, the recently-published West Harrogate Parameters Plan and the forthcoming West Harrogate Infrastructure Delivery Strategy.

Coun Tim Myatt, cabinet member for planning at Harrogate Borough Council, said, without the Local Plan, housing developments would simply be developer-led.

“The assessment of each site in the Local Plan includes the impact on infrastructure and public services and the plan is accompanied by an infrastructure delivery plan,” he said.

“The applicants for those sites will have to demonstrate how they will mitigate the impact of development. It is only because of the Local Plan that infrastructure is being provided as homes are built.”

Coun Myatt added: "Harrogate Borough Council, as planning authority, often isn't the long-term provider of local services, such as highways, health and education, and that it is third party organisations who are consulted on local impact of developments on their service provision.

"The Local Plan allows those service providers greater clarity around where developments will take place until 2035, and it is the decision of those organisations how to spend the money they receive from developer s106 contributions.

"Without the Local Plan development would developer led and, therefore, the location of future development would be unknown to service providers.

"This would provide significant challenges to service providers when they are making long term investment decisions."

But Coun Pat Marsh, leader of the council’s opposition Liberal Democrat group, while still supportive of the idea of the Local Plan, argues it is not working in practice.

“The Lib Dems are very concerned about our infrastructure; it is not fit for purpose,” she said.

“There has been no meaningful local infrastructure improvements so far.”

The Harrogate and Knaresborough Labour Party is also calling for more action to create meaningful communities from the biggest urban expansion the district has seen for decades.

It says changes to the planning system made by successive Tory Prime MInisters over the past 12 years have greatly reduced the voice of communities when it comes to housing developments and made true planning difficult.

Chris Watt, local Labour Party spokesperson, said: “New developments should have proper infrastructure, including good transport links rather than clogging already congested local residential streets with yet more traffic.

"They must be sustainable, with a good mix of housing for different sizes of families and a large proportion of genuinely affordable property and use green technologies for heating, insulation and power.

Local services must be readily accessible and able to support the number of new residents. Wherever possible, they should avoid building on greenfield sites.

"The voice of local people is essential in considering any new proposals.

"The Tories are trying to take away the ability for people to have their views to new developments properly heard.

"Labour would restore these rights so that existing local communities do not have new developments forced on them where they are not appropriate."

The release of new figures recently from the Government’s Housing Delivery Test showing 2,682 were built in the Harrogate district between 2018 and 2021, when only 987 were needed to meet demand has only served to fuel the debate.

Coun Pat Marsh argues that recent revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework put even more emphasis on councils hitting housing targets.

She said: “It it is terrible and it is the Conservatives fault both nationally and locally.

"Nationally by removing powers to control development from councils and locally by taking six years to get a local plan in place which meant a six years free for all for developers.

"The Government want houses but do not give local councils the real powers to achieve what is required for the local infrastructure needs for all these large developments.

"As house prices continue to rise, she warns the priority given to house building is unlikely to change any time soon.

And, Coun Marsh added, the pressure on local councils to let housing happen was, of anything, going to grow the rest of the decade.

“The new method of calculating housing need, the introduction of the housing delivery test to punish local authorities for not delivering their housing numbers and the need to revisit Local Plan housing numbers on a five-year basis mean that planners are under immense pressure from the Government to build more and more houses.”

Another part of the equation leading to disatisfaction with the outcome of Harrogate's Local Plan and the planning system lies in the piece-meal nature of both house building and the delivery - or not - of the new infrastructure required by growing populations and rising traffic.

But North Yorkshire County Council, which is the highways authority in the Harrogate district and is in charge of 80% of services, and Harrogate Borough Council say the district-wide wave of new house building is, in fact, following the rules of the planning system.

Both acknowledge that each new planning application is considered individually on its own merits.

In addition, they say, although developers can be asked to contribute financially to the aftermath of new housing and expanding populations, this is limited specifically to the knock-on effects they have created, not to existing problems in each area.

Coun Don Mackenzie, the county council’s executive member for access and transport, said: “The Local Plan provides for a more generalised policy for highways, travel and transport for the district.

“But each new planning application is considered on its own merits.”

So is change possible? In theory, Coun Pat Marsh says it is - by giving power back to the local area, local politicians and local people.

"We need all types of tenures of houses to be built, even just for natural growth, built by both the private and the public sector and through both large and small developments," she said.

"We Lib Dems are now keen for councils to start building homes again and need to have the freedoms to borrow to build, and to decide how to manage the loss of homes through the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme."

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