How we saved our historic high street
After a seven-year battle, a small North Yorkshire town has beaten the urban planners. Resident Selina Scott reveals how they did it
There was a joyous celebration the other night in the Talbot Hotel Malton, a handsome Georgian coaching inn that sits at the heart of this traditional North Yorkshire market town. Ale and champagne were drunk in equal measure. Toasts and speeches were made. Backs were slapped in congratulation. Ruddy-faced agricultural workers and aristocratic scions mixed as one.
And was that the bells of the Norman St Michael’s Church ringing out for evensong or to signal a great victory for the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker who had risen up together to defeat the insidious, often secretive, powers of State and Profit they feared would wreck their town?
Malton has good reason to enjoy its party. It had taken seven years to bring an end to a proposal to build a totally unsuitable supermarket, bigger than a Premiership football pitch, which would have driven out the small, independent shopkeepers who supply local farmers and give this beautiful and friendly town so much of its character.
Seven years, two public inquiries, endless protest meetings, battles with local councillors, conferences with lawyers, pleas to government ministers, dark suggestions of malice against those at the barricades from powerful forces, all at a gigantic cost of £1,700,000, which local ratepayers, already struggling with cuts to vital services, will have to pay.
In succeeding, campaigners have struck a decisive blow for grassroots democracy, proving that with energy, anger, organisation and a fierce love for a town, it is possible to drive out the commercial goliaths who have destroyed so much of the fabric of our high streets. It is also a victory for The
Telegraph’s Reinventing the High Street campaign. This newspaper prominently featured over several years Malton’s battle to preserve its unique atmosphere and fabric, and in doing so our call was taken up by other communities across the country faced with a similar encroachment from the wrecking ball, offering support and suggestions in which ideas for battle plans were shared.
Let me tell you about Malton, a town that is dear to my heart in the old North Riding, close to Herriot country. My grandfather, in his retirement, was once the editor of the local paper. My father, Charles, was chairman of Ryedale District Council, the authority governing Malton. I have a small shop selling cashmere in the Shambles.
It is the kind of town where this long lineage is treasured. Its origins are Roman but the architecture is honey-stoned Georgian and Victorian. The River Derwent meanders close by. Every Thursday and Friday there has been a livestock market. Sheep and cattle are driven in for auction and the bellowing of heifers reverberates down the medieval passageways. The same passageways were known to Charles Dickens, who found his inspiration for A Christmas Carol here in the tiny lawyer’s office of his best friend, Charles Smithson.
The town has remained unspoiled, at least in part because it has been owned by only a few families since the Norman Conquest. Sixty per cent of the property in Malton belongs to the Fitzwilliam Estate and the Naylor Leyland family. The Naylor Leylands, whose Fitzwilliam antecedents once owned Wentworth Woodhouse, a Yorkshire mansion bigger than Buckingham Palace, now live in almost equal splendour at Milton Hall near Peterborough.
But it was around the Naylor Leylands that the local people rallied in the often brutal and bloody battle to save their town. It was the family who recruited a high-priced legal team from London to contest the arrogance and illegality of building the supermarket at an initial cost of £170,000.
It all started in 2008 when Conservative-dominated Ryedale District Council commissioned a strategy for Malton town centre. As part of this strategy it recommended Malton’s car park should be developed for a superstore. Two years later the council disclosed they were in partnership with a property developer. Once planning permission had been given by the council, the property developer would pay the same council £5 million. And the building of the supermarket –
‘The supermarket would have driven out the shopkeepers who give the town much of its character’
which was believed to be Tesco, although this was never confirmed – would go ahead.
It was our contention that the council had no right to flog off the car park or give planning permission for a development that would fill the coffers of the council and harm the town.
The council, meanwhile, insisted it was acting in the wider public interest. “The strengths of Malton are its independent retailers and the charm of this pretty Georgian town,” said a spokesman of the local authority’s position. “However, Malton has fallen in the rankings over recent years and many local people now travel to York or Scarborough to do their supermarket and other shopping. The historic buildings in the town centre do not provide suitable accommodation for many high street retailers. The car park has a long history of under use. The site itself is not particularly sensitive in terms of Malton’s historic fabric.”
Battle began. Two hundred people marched to the council chambers, placards in hands, shouting angrily. For five weeks a double decker bus became a rallying point in the market square. Local media, radio television and newspapers were kept busy with headlines trumpeting Malton’s fury.
An entreaty was made to Eric Pickles, then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. His response went along the lines of “nothing to do with me, guv”. In other words, it was deemed to be the council’s responsibility.
An appeal was lodged, and a government inspector arrived in Malton for a five-day hearing. He ruled the council was out of order and told it to pay all legal costs. That should have been the end of it, but Ryedale District Council wouldn’t give up. It asked the property developer to submit an amended planning application, which was then unanimously passed.
The next step was to petition the Court of Appeal, which agreed that another independent review should take place. High Court judge Mr Justice Dove overruled the amended planning permission. Yet still the council persevered with its unpopular plan.
It was at this point, on the brink of disaster, that sense prevailed. Eight newly elected councillors, untainted by previous decisions, rebelled against those who had pushed through the deal and succeeded in forcing the leader of the council to back down and recommend the contract with the developer was terminated. We had won.
I hope that other towns across the country that feel powerless when local authorities and big business appear to conspire against their best interests will be inspired and take heart from Malton’s victory. My guidance to them is simple. Here’s what I have learnt:
Organise for the fight ahead as though you were facing a foreign invader.
Have a well thought through strategic battle plan and forget you are a decent law-abiding citizen given to understanding the other person’s point of view.
Fight like tigers and give no quarter.
Take nothing for granted. You will be astonished at the difficulty of opposing politicians.
Be remorseless in calling in every favour you can and use the media to support you ruthlessly.
Build a war chest. Persuade the wealthy it is in their interests to contribute.
Lawyers are expensive but you will need them.
The great 18th-century statesman Edmund Burke, once the MP for Malton, famously said: “When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
I have no doubt he would have been proud that the constituency he once represented acted so forcibly on his words.
‘Forget you are a decent citizen given to seeing the other person’s point of view’ People power: Selina Scott and some of the people who campaigned to prevent the building of a superstore in the centre of the Georgian town of Malton