HOUSING plans for York for the next 15 years have been unveiled, with 5,000 fewer homes than previously proposed.

City of York Council has revealed its draft Local Plan, and has cut the total number of proposed new houses for 2015 to 2030 from 22,000 to 16,980 - a reduction of 996 a year.

Cllr Dave Merrett, cabinet member for planning, put the change down to new Government guidance, and feedback from two rounds of public consultation.

Council leader James Alexander said the new homes set out in the plan would meet a backlog of housing need created in York in recent years, and start to fight the housing crisis and cost of living problems in the city.

Two new gipsy and traveller sites at Naburn and on the B1224 near Rufforth also appear in the plan, as well as land for businesses and industrial use - including land on Hull Road for an extension to the Science Park, and at Elvington Business Park, which the council claims will bring 13,500 new jobs to the city by putting aside the land for businesses to develop on.

Cllr Alexander said they wanted to stop businesses that were set up and grown in York from leaving the city when they outgrow premises and could not find decent office space for a medium sized business in the city.

The housing reductions have come by reducing the housing density on some sites to create more green space, and through the creation of “buffer zones” at Moor Lane, Woodthorpe and Whinthorpe, to protect vulnerable environmental sites at Heslington Tilmire and Askham Bog SSSI.

Large and controversial new settlements at Whinthorpe and Clifton Gate, north of Clifton Moor, are still in the proposals for development in the next 25 years; while a site near Earswick that could take up to 2,000 new homes has been excluded from the immediate plans but set aside as “safeguarded land” for future development.

Major transport plans such as the dualling of the outer ring road and a new railway station for Haxby are also featured.

Cllr Dave Merrett said the city needed around £300 million in investment to bring infrastructure up to scratch, and the council was very close to securing funding from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority for the first stage of major upgrades on ring road roundabouts. Solar farms could also appear in York under the new plan.

 

Policy will prevent a building ‘free-for-all’

THE draft local plan sets out the future of housing and industrial development in York, as well as major transport plans.

There will now be a city-wide consultation with the public, and the plan needs the approval of the full city council before it can be submitted to a Government inspector for final approval.

Cllr Dave Merrett, cabinet member for planning, said he was determined to see the plan fully developed and approved, in order to protect York from a development “free-for-all”.

A previous local plan, the local development framework, was abandoned in 2012 after changes in national planning rules.

The current draft has been drawn up after two public consultations, which attracted more than 18,000 responses in total.

The papers will now be presented to a local plan working group of councillors and the city council’s cabinet in the next few weeks for approval, before a third and final public consultation is launched in October and the plan goes before a full meeting of council in December.

The final stage of the plan’s development will begin in the New Year when it is inspected by a Government planning expert.

Although the council hopes the inspection will be well under way before the local election in May, Cllr Merrett said it was unlikely the inspector would report or make a decision until much later in the year.