RESIDENTS have told of their shock and disbelief when they discovered a new town bigger than Pocklington was being proposed near their homes in countryside south-east of York.

Householders claim Whinthorpe – a 5,500-home community on 460 acres of farmland alongside the A64 near Heslington – would have a devastating impact on their community, but also much further afield.

They say schools in the area will be unable to cater for so many additional pupils and roads will be unable to cope with so much extra traffic.

Residents said they only heard about the City of York Council draft Local Plan proposal when it was reported in The Press, and one resident, Matthew Clement, said when his wife told him about it, his first reaction was: “Don’t be stupid! They can’t possibly be meaning that.”

Another local, Jo Broadbent, said: “My reaction was just total shock, because of the sheer size of it. It’s a bit unbelievable.”

Nick Allen, chairman of Heslington Village Trust, said the land had been allocated without any prior assessment of the local infrastructure’s ability to cope, and this was an inversion of normal procedures.

Heslington Parish Council has also voted to reject the “totally unacceptable” proposals for a town which it claimed would be half as big again as Pocklington.

It claimed there was no identified means of access to the town and no indication of how Fulford Road and Hull Road, which were already “gridlocked” at peak times, would cope with several thousand more vehicles trying to enter York.

The parish said the site was also unsuitable because half of it had suffered deep flooding several times in the past 12 months. There was also potential damage to the Tilmire, a nature conservation area of national importance.

Councillor Tracey Simpson-Laing, cabinet member for housing, said all households had a Local Plan leaflet delivered to them which indicated key sites to be consulted on and signposted residents to where they could obtain further information and how they could make a comment.

She said legally, the council could not withdraw sites from the consultation unless they fell in to four certain categories, and this site did not do so.

She said: “Just because a site has been put forward by a landowner it does not mean development would ever go ahead and the final decision does not lay with the council but the Government Planning Inspector.”

If any development were to affect Tilmire, it wouldn’t be acceptable development, she added.