Major concerns over flooding and sewage escape in the village have been expressed on numerous occasions by residents, the Parish Council, action groups within the village and even in the House of Commons by our M.P., Sir Alec Shelbrooke. It seemingly has made no difference whatsoever as planning permission was given this week for the 58 home Avant Housing development off Moor Road.

The planning application was approved at a meeting of the Skipton & Ripon Area Planning Committee of North Yorkshire Council held in Ripon Town Hall, when the chair of the Parish Council, Councillor Dean Culshaw and villager, David Richold, spoke against the application. Several other residents were also in attendance at the meeting.

Flooding and sewage have been the topic of numerous, emails, letters and telephone calls over many years from concerned residents, the very people who live in Bishop Monkton, who know the village best and can truly assess, first hand, the implications of such developments. Despite all this, and much more evidence showing the severity of the problem, including the fact that Yorkshire Water has discharged into the River Ure from its Bishop Monkton site 184 times over the past 12 months, planning permission was granted, albeit reluctantly.

Even though Yorkshire Water has openly stated on a previous occasion that the village was close to sewage capacity, it had not raised concerns that this latest development would overwhelm the system. This meant that the committee could not insert a condition that capacity must be improved before work could start on the development.

Councillor Andy Brown, vice-chair of the Planning Committee, said that the committee had no choice but to approve the scheme, which was within the village's development limit and on land allocated for housing. He felt that the Committee no longer had the power to represent the people who had elected its members, adding “We are driven by rules above us and if the site meets those rules, we have no choice other than to pass it”.

At the end of the meeting the Committee agreed on a motion that called for Yorkshire Water to provide reliable assessments of system capacity when assessing developments in North Yorkshire in the future.

The approval of this application, which is against the wishes of many residents, illustrates how vitally important it is that all villagers engage with the Neighbourhood Plan, a development framework based on local needs, with input from villagers, that will influence the vitality of the village for years to come. The Parish Council recently presented the idea of such a Plan to the village To read details of that meeting and to get involved click here.

The formulation of a Neighbourhood Plan, in itself a legally recognised document and which will become a part of the statutory development plan for the county, means the village can ensure it has a say in future developments, allowing the community “to get ahead of the curve” and not be presented with a matter about which it knows nothing and over which it is too late to exert any real influence.