A SECOND MP has hit out at plans to create a new town for 25,000 people between Ripon and Thirsk.

Ripon MP David Curry joined growing protests to the controversial plan which would swallow up some of the country's finest agricultural land where the Vale of Mowbray meets the Vale of York.

Farmers and villagers in a cluster of small communities threatened by the new town are furious they have been targeted for a town in the countryside. Mr Curry said the plan was a bird which was dead even before it tried to fly. It was a silly suggestion and out of date.

Much talk at the moment was on trying to build new homes on brown field sites where development would be a benefit.

"This idea would be about as far away from the demands for jobs that you could possibly get into North Yorkshire", he said. Earlier, Vale of York MP Anne McIntosh roundly condemned the plans and pledged to fight them.

And a former Mayor of Ripon, Councillor Rowland Simpson, is planning to resurrect the Rescue Ripon organisation. As a leading member of the group he helped fight off a council plan to run a relief road through Ripon which, it was claimed, would have cut the city in two.

The controversial new town proposals emerged from the Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Planning Conference which engaged London planning experts to suggest sites for housing needs into the next Millennium.

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