More homes and jobs in Moors plan
National Park is ‘not a museum’, says authority
RURAL: A wider choice of new affordable homes and a yearround supply of jobs needs to be created in the North York Moors to halt an alarming population decline and a loss of its services, says a new long-term plan.
A WIDER choice of new affordable homes and a year-round supply of jobs needs to be created in the North York Moors to halt an alarming population decline and a loss of its services, according to a new long-term vision for the National Park.
Low wages from farming and seasonal tourism, steep house prices, closures of schools, shops and post offices and the withdrawal of bus services, have heaped pressure on the National Park’s deeply rural communities, a new draft Local Plan for the area explains.
The planning blueprint, drawn up to guide development and policy decisions in the National Park over the next 15 years, recognises that action is needed even if the quality of life in the park is still considered to be “generally very good” with low crime, clean air and access to some of the nation’s most stunning countryside.
The plan includes a target to build 551 new homes in the park between 2020 and 2035 – including 188 in Helmsley.
Malcolm Bowes, deputy chairman of the North York Moors National Park Authority, said the National Park “is not a museum” and cannot be treated as such if it is to thrive.
“Its landscape has evolved over millennia and has been influenced by more than 10,000 years of human habitation,” said Mr Bowes, who is the chairman of the working group behind the development of the draft plan.
“This Local Plan is concerned with the next 15 years. It seeks to balance the overriding need to conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the National Park with the need for new homes, jobs and services.”
The plan must manage these often competing aims, he said, by putting in place policies to guide “careful” decision-making on where new development will be located and how it looks and functions.
“Our goal is to leave to future generations a National Park that is even more beautiful, healthy and culturally rich than the one we inherited,” Mr Bowes said.
The Local Plan for the North York Moors identifies many issues which echo the challenges that threaten the sustainability of life in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, as covered by The
Yorkshire Post in a special report earlier this year. In the North York Moors, there was a net loss of 1,108 people – a 4.2 per cent population slump– between 2001 and 2016, and one of the new plan’s aims is to reverse that trend and encourage more younger people to stay in or move into the area.
Just one in four residents is aged under 30 with young families being priced out. On average a house costs £255,342, more than £12,000 higher than the national average.
Where new housing is built every effort has to go into ensuring it is of a type, size, tenure and price that supports communities’ long-term sustainability, the new draft plan states.
It explains that about a third of household incomes are £20,000 or less and so there is a need to encourage better-paid and more diverse jobs, and to flatten a trend of seasonal employment.
The importance of local services to rural villages is recognised in the plan, stating that polices must seek to prevent their loss. In recent years, the villages of Lealholm, Mickleby and Sawdon have lost their Post Offices, Danby and Swainby have seen their general stores shut and Swainby and Ingleby Arncliffe no longer have primary schools. Transport and connectivity are also highlighted and opportunities must be seized to improve access to and within the Moors, to roll out electric car-charging points and to design better car parking in villages.
If the plan is signed off by the park’s planning committee on Thursday, it will go out to public consultation between July 30 and October 12 before the Government’s approval is sought in February next year.
The National Park is not a museum. Michael Bowes, deputy chairman of the North York Moors National Park Authority.
THE NEW action plan for the North York Moors mirrors, in many respects, the policy challenges facing the Yorkshire Dales and other National Parks across the country. Unless more job opportunities are created, and a new generation of affordable housing built, the erosion of key public services and amenities will continue.
Yet, while locally led policy frameworks do enable bespoke plans to be developed for each area, tangible progress will only be made if regional and national leaders view the rural economy as an investment and tackle recurring issues like broadband access.
Not only has the Campaign to Protect Rural England revealed the extent to which local economic partnerships are marginalising countryside communities with their urban focus, but agriculture was largely omitted from the Industrial Strategy and former Thirsk and Malton MP Anne McIntosh spoke last week in the House of Lords about Whitehall’s lack of policy co-ordination and its continuing inability to rural-proof new policies.
She’s right – the home page of the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs website appears does not even acknowledge the existence, or importance, of the rural economy. Though a more detailed search does reveal a raft of statistical data, this dates back to 2016 and gives further credence to the view that the Government is so bogged down by Brexit that it has no vision for the future. For, irrespective of the terms of Britain’s exit from the European Union, Yorkshire’s rural heartlands have so much more to offer the national economy if they have the necessary policies and infrastructure in place, and Ministers need to recognise this.