Well, there’s a surprise. Nice to see it so openly declared though. I think even the non-expert could see that there were too many small apartments being built. But this was based on forecasts by experts, presumably.

So it obviously begs the question, how reliable are the predictions of need for the next decade/20 years? Should the green belt be built on when forecasters got it so wrong before? Just asking. I’m not an expert. Do tell me if I’ve misinterpreted this but I read it as ‘We built a load of stuff we don’t really need, oops that was wrong, let’s try again based on our next forecast and see if that works out any better.’

[That’s a massive increase, isn’t it, in the 20-24 age group? And the Local Plan is clearly designed to appeal in particular to younger voters — sorry, younger people — and it does. The university educated ones. Have no idea what the other younger people of this city think about the Local Plan. Does anyone know?]

[speaks for itself]

[So, we’re pressing for massive growth, but it will be hell on the roads around and into York. Even more than it is now.]

[unless your sport is bowling. Then it’s not such a rosy picture. Maybe not glamorous enough, doesn’t fit with the (young, middle-class) vision? Just asking …]

Indeed. Has already happened in many ways. Every generation has seen the loss of special qualities, but also improvements and new energy. The small changes are natural growth and progress. This is an entirely different thing, isn’t it, this vast, complex masterplan.

How to comment

There’s a load of information at york.gov.uk/localplan, including a form for comment here. Thankfully it’s just big open accommodating text boxes rather than one of those tedious ‘how satisfied are you, from 1 to 10′ formats. Or email comments to localplan@york.gov.uk.

You might want to say that you don’t feel enough information was made available for long enough for residents to make informed comment?

The post A few quotes from/notes on … Local Plan /2 appeared first on York Stories.

Hands up who’s read the Local Plan Preferred Options main documents? I’ve been trying to, before the consultation period ends (on 31 July).

The main point is:

There’s not enough time

– for most of us to consider all this properly. I don’t believe it’s humanly possible to get to grips with all this in the time allotted for this consultation.

Perhaps that will have to be my only response submitted.

The main document is around 350 pages. It’s very interesting in parts, eye-opening on some matters, in other parts has confirmed the impressions I already had. I’ve only been able to read a fraction of the available information.

Of course I’ve perhaps been foolish in trying to read the information. Perhaps that’s a waste of time. I thought so originally, and for a time I was happy to trust in the work of greater minds than mine, and to trust our local authority to do the right thing. I wasn’t particularly sure what ‘the right thing’ was, but I thought I could trust them to know best.

Then I realised I wasn’t too comfortable with some of the attitudes to York behind this ‘vision’ for the city’s future. More on that later maybe.

Perhaps just as interesting as the thing itself is seeing the way it has been presented. Other people’s reactions to it, the reporting of it.

It’s political

I feel like I’m watching the various parties fighting an election campaign. This has been the weirdest thing about it.

What I thought would be an intelligent and informed debate about the future of York has much of the time boiled down to the Tories being inflammatory about forests of wind farms on the one side, and on the other side, James Alexander showing off on Twitter when York and its imminent house-building explosion gets positive coverage.

Somewhere in there in the middle of it all there are a few people without a particular axe to grind who are doing their best to get relevant information out to residents and present important information on particular aspects they feel are missing from the Plan and its background papers. I’ve noticed, via Twitter, two people who appear to be doing that. (There will of course be other people doing similar, not on Twitter.)

It seems like we’re months away from even starting a reasonable debate, if ever, and yet the consultation period ends in two days time.

How to comment on the Draft Local Plan

There’s a load of information at york.gov.uk/localplan, including a form for comment here. Thankfully it’s just big open accommodating text boxes rather than one of those tedious ‘how satisfied are you, from 1 to 10′ formats. Or email comments to localplan@york.gov.uk

The post Thoughts, impressions … Local Plan /1 appeared first on York Stories.

In a short constituency profile: ‘York is an elegant town with medieval history, a railway centre and manufacturing industry, plus tourism and a university.’

Manufacturing industry? A railway centre? One university and tourism as an afterthought? When was this written, 1970?

Clearly the Guardian needs to update its constituency profile, which might as well say that York is called Eboracum and has some excellent bath houses, or that we stick severed heads on spikes at Micklegate Bar.

Perhaps for a more up to date view it could refer to a recent article in the Economist, headlined ‘Northern Light’. York has seen many changes.

The article suggests that this is all to do with the current administration and ends up reading rather like a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party in York. Or like propaganda for the draft Local Plan.

It reminded me that there are many ways of seeing a place, and it all depends on who you talk to.

I’ve lived in York for all my 40+ years, apart from three years away at university. I know I’m guilty of that possessive thing you feel when you’re still in, or have returned to, the place you were born and bred, a feeling which increases with the passing years. It’s always odd to read other people’s descriptions of a place you know really well and feel a great attachment to. It’s a bit like someone offering a critique of your mum.

The Economist piece quotes Ron Cooke: ‘Twenty years ago the city, as Sir Ron puts it, was “poor, proud and pretty”.’ I’ve no wish to diss Sir Ron (I wouldn’t dare, he’s a local grandee) — York is certainly proud and pretty — but twenty years ago it wasn’t poor.

In many ways York in 1993 seemed a far ‘richer’ place than it does now. It has lost a lot since, but perhaps that loss is recognised and felt only by some of us, maybe by people of my age and older, from a similar background.

The changes have been massive. Just as in many other towns and cities.

But York was never going to suffer the kind of decline other places did, simply because it’s so beautiful and such a desirable place to live. That was just as much the case twenty years ago as now. It’s one of the reasons I came back. Its attractiveness, as the article states, is its greatest asset. It is attractive because it has managed to retain so many historic buildings and has only a few really ugly ones. But it has buildings from every decade, which is why it’s rather suprising to read again the suggestion that ‘the city council has been fiercely hostile to new building.’ (Andrew Lindsay) When I look at some of the more recent developments I wish they’d been a bit more fierce in their hostility.

All they are really is ‘cautious’, and it seems odd to criticise this approach while also acknowledging that York’s greatest asset is its attractiveness. The hostility/caution regarding new building is what has helped preserve the historic buildings, and their wider setting.

One of the most troubling assessments comes from Danny Dorling, who suggests that York is ‘a chunk of the affluent south east dropped in Yorkshire.’
Is it? Is it really? I would have thought York people would be incensed by this, but it appears to have gone unnoticed. Maybe then we’re not as proud as we were twenty years ago. The city has lost its identity to the extent that it’s a chunk of somewhere else, more like the south east than Yorkshire, and everyone’s happy with that. And what does it say about the rest of Yorkshire: Yorkshire’s a bit rubbish but never mind, York’s alright because it’s like the south east? I’m a bit tired of these patronising London-centric views.

The article, I have to say, has been warmly welcomed and praised by many people. Obviously James Alexander liked it. So did many Labour supporters. Many people agreed that they wanted York to get building new housing as soon as possible, on green belt if necessary. I’ve written about that, discussing the value of the ‘green belt’ and whether we who already have homes should be so concerned with protecting our views and open space when new homes are needed.

How many homes though?

‘James Alexander, the city’s council leader, wants to build around 1,100 new houses a year over the next decade’.

This made me imagine him on a building site with a stack of bricks, building them himself — and I have to say that comments I’ve heard and read from people in the building industry suggest he might have to. Restrictive rules on affordable housing requirements are making building difficult, and according to those in the know the targets are completely unachievable. The piece helpfully (and alarmingly) states that the suggested target is ‘a rate of construction comparable to fast-growing Milton Keynes.’

York and Milton Keynes. I don’t need to expand on that really.

I remember York when it was railways and chocolate. It had its own, proper northern — if slightly posh northern — identity. Now it’s a chunk of the south east and aiming to be a bit like Milton Keynes?

The post Ways of seeing … York appeared first on York Stories.

Just one field. One bit of one field. Greenfield/green belt land. At Knapton.

I’d been out on my bike up Acomb way and it being the longest day, with some daylight left, I thought I’d visit Knapton, a place I knew well in the 1970s and early 80s. I’ve cycled through here only a couple of times since, during the day, rushing, on my way to somewhere. Which is an entirely different thing to approaching slowly and stopping and having a proper look. I thought I’d do that, partly for nostalgic reasons, partly because the Local Plan has focussed my attention here.

I thought it would be ruined, so many places are if you go back after thirty-odd years with childhood memories in your mind. But from Acomb it’s just the same. You turn off Beckfield Lane, go up Knapton Lane, nice houses, tree-lined verges — an extension of Acomb’s apparently ever-increasing girth — and then the houses stop, and there’s open land. Just a field, either side of the road, separated from the road by a path and a bit of verge and a low hedge. On the left there’s a tree in the hedge, by a gate. Where I took the photo above.

It was possibly because it was evening, and quiet, with no one else around, but it’s a rare thing to feel such a sudden change of atmosphere, quite a profound change. When discussing it with a friend later I wondered if it could be something measurable like a drop in the temperature as soon as you’re away from buildings. All I know is that I felt, within a few metres of the end of the Knapton Lane houses, like I was in a completely different environment.

I’ve just been reminded that it’s called Ten Thorn Lane on the maps. But for us it was all just Knapton Lane: it went to Knapton.

Perhaps at one time it had ten thorny shrubs. Maybe the hedges at the edges of the fields here were first marked out by ten hawthorn saplings, long long ago, before anyone can remember.

I remember that we used to come up here for walks and look in the hedges for birds’ nests. Or came up here to cycle round on our bikes, somewhere quiet, safe, but away from our suburban streets. Also I think we were brought here when very young by our parents, when they fancied a stroll and wanted to see a field rather than someone else’s house across the road.

Maybe all those things made me stop at the field gate and think what a special place it is. Maybe other people wouldn’t have any of that, and would just see it as a boring field.

And it is just one field, before the houses begin again, of Knapton itself.
But before them, not far from the field gate, this sign.

And a little further along, this sign. The photo isn’t that clear – it says ‘SAY NO TO TRAVELLERS SITE AT KNAPTON’ and ‘please contact the York Council Planning Office’.

After passing a few bungalows, there’s a junction. Old Knapton is here. A tiny place.

We’re turning left and going down the marvellously named ‘Bland Lane’. This could be named after someone with the name Bland, or it could be a good example of ‘say it as you see it’. There’s nothing much of obvious interest on Bland Lane, and as I recall there never was. After a while you reach the Wetherby Road.

At the junction, more signs.

It’s only another field, between here and the outer ring road (A1237). On this field a showpeople’s site could be built. It’s in the Local Plan as a possibility. There’s more information in the links at the bottom of the page.

There were two roads we used to cycle along from that small crossroads at Knapton village. They both ended at Wetherby Road. The other has been truncated by the ring road cutting across it, so I didn’t bother exploring that one, but headed back to the main street of Knapton as the sun was sinking low.

This is really the only ‘facility’ tiny Knapton has. The Red Lion pub.

Nice to see it’s still a pub. Alongside it an attractive house with flowers spilling out from the railings. And opposite and adjacent some more nice old properties, including one with an atmospherically overshadowed entrance, obscured by greenery. And a few newer ones built around the back since I was last up here.

Off the main street, from the crossroads we just passed, is ‘Back Lane’, which, as its name suggests, just runs round in a small semi-circle behind the Red Lion and a few other properties before ending up again on this short main street.

And it is very short, and suddenly you’re at the end of the buildings, and there’s a brick-built pinfold, which I don’t recall ever noticing before. Perhaps it was covered in ivy back then. Or perhaps I was too young to recognise a pinfold or care about it if I did.

And then it’s not long before you meet the ring road. I’ve approached this bit from the other side but it still disorientates me. You need to cycle along it for a few metres before you meet the other bit of what used to be the road to Poppleton. Me and my mum, me and my sister, used to leave Beckfield Lane up Knapton Lane and cycle to Poppleton on minor country roads. The reason I mention that is because I want to stress how much Knapton has had to accommodate change already. The outer ring road skirts it so closely it’s remarkable it has managed to still seem rural — at least on the summer evening when I passed by.

Across the ring road it’s a different thing altogether. The cut-off section of road between the outer ring road and the A59 — what used to be the continuation of the road from Knapton — is strangely grim and depressing and not as I remember it at all. It’s not a through route anymore, it’s a bit of road with a small industrial estate or ‘business park’ on it. It’s as if it’s not the same road. I just wanted to get out of there as soon as I could.

I emerged near what used to be Challis’s, and is still a garden centre, with a Park & Ride site forming opposite, and Poppleton across the way. I turned right and cycled home, thinking about how tiny Knapton is. How it’s survived the ring road being built so close, how it needs looking after and protecting. That the place has managed to stay special, and I don’t know how it’s managed that, but it has.

I’m not sure if it can also cope with a concreted yard filling a large part of the green area separating it from the ring road.

Footnote

Political and personal agendas obscure the facts in this debate and in all of them, and it can be time-consuming trying to get to the reliable and objective information. I’ve made an effort to read up on Knapton, and on the Local Plan background documents regarding these controversial sites, and on the gypsy, traveller and showpeople’s communities and traditions. The links below are to documents and websites I found most interesting and illuminating. Please feel free to add further suggestions via the comments.

Elsewhere on the web

On Knapton:

Google Map to accompany this page

Lovely document with historical information and detailed analysis of Knapton village: Knapton Village Design Statement

On the Local Plan:

Gypsy, Traveller and Showpeople Accommodation Needs Supporting Paper (PDF)

Not an alluring title, but everyone should read it. It’s more interesting than it sounds. The main CoYC document relating not just to the proposed site at Knapton but to other proposed sites. It explained some aspects I was totally ignorant about. It certainly demolishes the notion which seems to be circulating that the local authority is just randomly shoving in travellers’ pitches.

More on gypsy and traveller communities and showmen:

Brief history and background to Traveller communities (from Haringey Council, PDF)

Irish Traveller Movement in Britain

‘Room to Roam’: England’s Irish Travellers and linked report (PDF)

Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain and Showmen’s Guild (Yorkshire section)

The post Knapton and the Local Plan appeared first on York Stories.

Or something.

I’m still trying to work it out and find my way through the information/misinformation.

The Local Plan is massive and complex, and just thinking about it may bring on fatigue and a sense of quiet desperation, so let’s calm and reinvigorate ourselves before contemplating it by focussing our eyes on something green. And brown. A bit of open land, green field/green belt between Rufforth and Knapton. Pictured in springtime a few years ago.

An earlier page discussed ‘brownfield’ land, and how the word makes it sound all dead and rubbish. Whereas ‘green belt’ is an appealing and emotive term, evoking a sense of the last vestiges of ye olde countryside preserved. Our modern-day walls maybe, protecting us not from enemy invaders as our old stone defences did but from ‘urban sprawl’, from being joined to Leeds, or worse, Copmanthorpe.

For some months now I’ve been thinking about the ‘green belt’, trying to think of it in terms of specific bits of land, instead of in that rather vague way I’ve always thought of it before.

I thought of the open land to the right of Wigginton Road as you approach the city. I don’t value it for any picturesque qualities it has in itself, but because it creates a gap, which means that just for a moment, as you’re travelling along Wigginton Road, you see the Minster rising up on the horizon from behind the roadside hedge and framed by far-off trees. Like our medieval ancestors might have seen it. But I think the land there is part of Bootham Stray, so is presumably protected from development anyway.

I don’t have a photo of that view, so here’s a similar view from Bad Bargain Lane (the far-flung track-like part of it).

There’s pressure to find space for housing, and the Local Plan suggests some green belt areas which may be used. And of course, that isn’t popular. It’s not the whole green belt most campaigners are worried about, it’s particular bits of it. Maybe the bit their homes overlook or the bit they walk their dogs on at the moment or where they go to get some greenery and quiet. Understandable that residents would be upset at the thought of losing a place they value or a view they value.

But then all our homes spoiled someone else’s view, ‘concreted over’ a place previous citizens enjoyed as a green place. And surely no one who bought a 20th century built house on the edge of York expected that they would have a view of green fields forever, and that this was their entitlement? That somehow their street or area was the last phase in the city’s expansion?

Another view from the track leading to Bad Bargain Lane, on an evening in April, some years ago. (Can be enlarged.) Perhaps this idyllic scene has already been built on since. I must cycle out there sometime to have a look.

Those campaigning to protect the green belt often state that we should ‘build on the brownfield sites instead’. What they mean, I think, is ‘build it all somewhere else and not near me’.

Though the larger sites (Nestlé South, British Sugar, Terry’s, York Central) still haven’t been built on, there’s been so much new housing development in recent years on the smaller ‘brownfield’ sites that it’s hard to keep up. Off the top of my head, just near my part of town: on Heworth Green; near Haxby Road school; on Shipton St School; on the Groves WMC site; on the Abbots Mews hotel site; on Clifton Garage site.

Then there are the massive blocks built as student housing on Lawrence Street, off Walmgate, on Carmelite Street. The flats on the Hungate site. And so on.

All that building affects those nearby, and many of us living near these sites have lost our views, our open spaces, have seen towering tall things changing the horizon. But it’s what happens. Always has, always will.

Looking back, rather than forwards, I’m sure the cowkeepers of Clifton weren’t happy when the fields around here were covered with terraced housing in the late 19th century. But I’m rather glad that happened as otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here in one of them typing this, and would have nowhere to plug in the laptop. If you’re in a late 20th century home at the edge of the built-up area then your house spoiled someone else’s ‘green belt’/green field view within living memory.

Those brownfield developments, as I’m sure we’ve all noticed, are often apartments, tall blocks, making the most of the available land in prime locations by building as tall as possible. They’re a far cry from those 1920s and 1930s semis out in Acomb and Burnholme and well, everywhere, with gardens front and back. Looks like we might need some more open land to build some new houses like that? Do the people who already live in nice houses out in Skelton etc not think other people deserve a house with a bit of space around it?

So many small apartments have been built in the last decade or so that I think planners must have forecasted that the majority of the population would be divorced, or young and childless, or a student. Some couples, despite the austerity and misery, have managed to stay together, and some even managed to make children, and they perhaps don’t all want to cram into small city centre apartments.

Just a few thoughts from a non-expert, just observing it all and trying to make sense of it. Comments welcome below. Facts are particularly welcome. I’m finding it difficult to split fact from fiction and spin and propaganda, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

I’ll leave you with this roadsign on a narrow lane near York, where an even narrower lane apparently leads to ‘Farms only’. It isn’t only housing development threatening the green belt. If we believe the more inflammatory comments made recently on the Local Plan, this could soon read ‘Wind Farms Only’.

Elsewhere on the web

Local Plan consultation, on the City of York Council website

The post Thoughts on, views from, the green belt appeared first on York Stories.

Here’s a list, partly for anyone who has missed the publicity on these, partly for me so I can find them all again. All are open for comment until 31 July and comments can be made via an online form.

Local Heritage List

Formerly known as ‘the Local List’. This survey, which can be completed online, asks if we support the principle of adopting this list. Can I suggest that the answer to this is ‘Yes’. Particularly if you enjoy this website, which has over the years focussed on the kind of buildings featured on the list. The draft list is online at yorklocallist.org.uk. Many buildings on it have already been demolished, and more are under threat. So please support the adoption of the Local Heritage List in case it can do something to protect those remaining.

More information and online survey form here. See also a recent letter to The Press.

Streetscape Strategy and Guidance

A report ‘to encourage a quality approach to the management of our streets and spaces, to ensure consistency, and to underline the importance of moving towards a fully accessible city.’ The draft report must be good as it features on the front, coincidentally, a handsome close-up shot of those stable paviours recently featured on these pages.

More information and online survey form here and relevant documents here.

Local Plan

Saving the longest and biggest till last. I’m sure everyone’s heard by now about the Local Plan, which is Very Important Indeed, in a very big way, and concerns the overall vision for the city’s future, what is built, where we build it. There’s much inflammatory misinformation floating about, so I guess we all have a duty to read and digest the supporting information, which will probably take all summer. There are many ways to find out more.

More information here.

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