The draft Local Plan published by City of York Council contains a number of policies to promote sustainable development, in the interests of revitalising the city centre, reducing demand for greenfield sites, safeguarding historic buildings, minimising the need for travel and improving security in the city centre.

Living Over The Shop developments contribute to all of those policies in addition to creating urgently-needed new housing units.

Best of all, they provide a net financial gain to the council in the form of additional council tax revenue from space which is currently generating little or no rate revenue.

My research so far has suggested that more than 300 additional flats could be created in this way in the centre of York.

Along with all the other benefits, this represents a saving of around 30 acres of land. All that is needed is a single investment in pump-priming work - a mere fraction of the annual budget for the council's newspaper, Citizen - which experience in other towns has shown would be recovered within five years.

However, I have been told by a council officer that councillors are unlikely to vote for this expenditure, even though it does not represent a net cost.

Perhaps any of your readers who feel strongly on the subject would like to make their views known, either directly to their councillors or through the letters column in the Evening Press?

Ann Petherick,

Project Director,

Living Over The Shop,

University of York,

The King's Manor,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.