February 2025 Update:

Last October the Village Hall was packed with villagers to hear representatives of Avant Homes talk about their revised plans for sixty homes near the Moor Road, Knaresborough Road junction in the centre of Bishop Monkton. At the meeting, the company made public promises to engage with the village to discuss concerns about the scheme, notably issues with road safety and with drainage infrastructure.

Details regarding the application can be seen further down this page and a full report of the October meeting can be viewed here.  The application follows a long standing larger application for the site from Avant (and earlier incarnations) which were withdrawn in May 2023 at the time of the appeal to the Inspector by Kebbell on the Church Farm site when the negative impact of all aspects of drainage in the village were re-considered.

Three and a half months on from that October meeting nothing has happened. 'Bishop Monkton Today' has tried to find out why.

The deadline for comments on the revised planning application for the site was November 22nd. The original target date for NYC Planners to make a recommendation on the application was in mid-January. Neither of these deadlines has been met. The hold-up appears to be that two key public bodies who are required to make comments have failed to do so and the Council has not apparently chased them up. The two bodies involved are the Lead Flood Authority and the Highways Department of North Yorkshire Council itself. Clearly, given the nature of the main concerns about the scheme - flooding and road safety - the comments of these consultees are crucial.

We understand that the planning officer handling this application has been off work for a while but is now back at work.

We asked North Yorkshire Council to answer these questions-

1. whether the two bodies mentioned above have or haven't yet responded with their comments.

2. whether there is a target date for when the application will come before the planning committee.

3. whether planning officers have reached a recommendation yet.

4. whether discussions have taken place since Nov 22nd with Avant Homes.

North Yorkshire Council’s Head of Development Management, Martin Grainger, said: “A date has yet to be set for when the application will be considered by the planning committee. Only once all consultation responses have been received and assessed along with the large number of local representations made about the proposed development will a recommendation be made by officers. Once a date has been set for committee, all parties who made representations will be notified."

An Avant Homes spokesperson said: “We have held no further formal discussions regarding the pending planning application for our proposed development in Bishop Monkton since our meeting with residents in October. We are currently awaiting the final outstanding consultation responses from key consultees, before being in a position to progress discussions with all relevant parties. We remain fully committed to working with North Yorkshire Council, Yorkshire Water and Bishop Monkton residents to further consider the concerns raised during October’s consultation meeting.”

The Parish Council is due to discuss the Avant application at its regular monthly meeting this coming Tuesday, 18th February

If you have a view on this, please email us.

 

30th October, 2024 - Public Meeting in Village Hall about revised plan

Avant Homes made a public commitment to a packed meeting at the Village Hall last night to come back soon with a response to ideas from villagers about drainage and road safety issues relating to their controversial, proposed sixty-home development in Bishop Monkton.

More than seventy people attended the meeting which had been facilitated by the Parish Council and chaired by its Vice-Chair, Sheila Parsons. Avant’s Regional Planning Manager, Chris Megson, told the meeting the new revised plan differed from earlier iterations in several key areas – a significant reduction in the density of housing (down from 88 to 60 homes); more public open space; a better mix of housing types and more attractive looking houses; as well as the retention of more hedgerows.

During the question and answer session, most speakers focused on the impact of the proposal on the village’s infrastructure, notably drainage and sewerage and the impact on road safety. Specific suggestions made included the following:-

• that the discharge point for surface water from the development via a new trench dug under Hungate should be further down the beck along Boroughbridge Road beyond the areas of the village most prone to flooding rather than near the Lamb and Flag site as proposed by Avant.
• that the new trench could also accommodate a new sewage pipe thus helping to alleviate the problem of foul water discharging into the drains.
• That three things might be done to lessen the road safety risks of the development -an entrance for the new development on Moor Road rather than Knaresborough Road; a roundabout at the Moor Road/Knaresborough Road junction and a footpath be built inside the hedgerow up Moor Road from the junction to the top end of the development.

There was widespread criticism of Yorkshire Water and other bodies for their failure to understand issues in the village. Several speakers suggested that Avant should be working with the village to put pressure on YW and others to improve the village infrastructure before the planning application was decided. In response, Avant’s Technical Director, Jon Birkin, who also attended the meeting, undertook to respond to the village soon after the deadline for comments to the Council had passed in November about whether the company would incorporate any of the village’s suggestions into their scheme.

A number of other issues were raised during the meeting, including the precise location of the proposed pedestrian crossing from the development across Knaresborough Road; the possibility of more bungalows in the plan; concern that there weren’t enough parking spaces planned for the scheme; and issues around the maintenance of trees and green spaces.

The development, on land near the Knaresborough Road/Moor Road junction, was originally for over 100 homes when it was first proposed back in 2020. The land involved is designated for housing in the Harrogate Local Plan but it has been the subject of hundreds of objections during the various stages of the planning process. The latest plan was submitted to North Yorkshire Council for planning permission on 1st October and the Council’s own target date for assessing the application is in January of next year.

Avant’s representatives told last night’s meeting that the deadline for comments to NYC was November 22nd. However, information on the Council’s planning portal says the deadline is November 15th as we have previously reported. To see the full planning application and to submit comments click

July 5th - 2024 - Avant Outline Proposals for 60 Homes

BMAG were contacted by Avant with an announcement that they are proposing to make a planning application for 60 Homes on the land by the X-roads (BM2/BM4).  This is down from their first plan in 2020 for 115 Homes, later reduced to 98 and then to 88. In May 2023 this application was withdrawn.  At the time, the Kebbell application (Church Farm BM3) was being rejected by the Local Area Planning Committee and was in the hands of the National Inspectors, since Kebbell had Appealed.  A common element between the two applications was Foul Water Drainage and shortly after the Inspector upheld the Appeal (thus permitting the current drainage systems to be used), Avant made contact over this reduced plan for 60 homes.

At their meeting in September, the Parish Council agreed to make contact with Avant suggesting that a public meeting be held in the village about the latest version of their planned development.

Their proposals, as shown on the earlier BMT website in early July -

Avant to Submit New Plans for 60 Homes

site plan - see below

The controversial plan to build homes near the crossroads at the edge of our village is being revived.

Avant Homes have let it be known that they intend to submit a revised planning application for 60 homes on the site at the junction of Knaresborough Road and Moor Road (BM2/4). Their previous plan, for 88 houses, was withdrawn last year.It’s less than three months since a Planning Inspector gave the go-ahead for the 23 home Kebbell Church Farm development, including over-riding local planning councillors major concerns regarding sewage and this may have encouraged Avant to resubmit their plans. One of the main objections to the original Avant plan was based on similar issues. Click here for a larger plan.

The Parish Council and BMAG are expected to have a meeting with Avant about the new application in the coming weeks.

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All of the earlier applications from Avant, through to their withdrawal in May 2023, including the original applications and dialogues from the first applications by Alfa/BerkeleyDeVeer from 2020, are recorded and detailed on the previous BMT - click here.