I HAVE submitted a letter of objection (currently top of the pile) to the application by Barratt Homes and Taylor Wimpey UK Ltd to build 672 houses in Norton on the basis that the 3,000+ additional daily car journeys generated will have a serious adverse impact on the air quality in Castlegate, Malton, in the Air Quality Management Area.
This is particularly relevant when taking account of the serious adverse impact on air quality of the proposed North Yorkshire County Council Highways, Norton and Malton Junction upgrade scheme. NYCC consultants WSP have already admitted that the Council Highways’ scheme alone will have a serious adverse impact on air quality in Castlegate and increase the concentration of carcinogenic Nitrogen Dioxide to illegal and lethal levels, yet the Barratt Wimpey application has ignored the negative impact of the North Yorkshire traffic scheme in its own air quality impact assessment. One of the air quality assessments is wrong and this is dangerous.
Neither the application from Barratt Wimpey nor the NYCC traffic scheme has accounted for the impact of the other scheme on local air quality, and by so doing, both schemes have blithely ignored National Planning Policy Guidance that requires all developments in the vicinity of an Air Quality Management Area to take account of the cumulative impact of other schemes in the area. The right hand would appear to not know (or care) what the left hand is doing.
Ryedale District Council seems to be ignoring planning and air quality law in deference to the volume house builders and its own myopic adherence to the fatally flawed Ryedale Plan.
People of Malton and Norton should be warned: RDC (soon to be replaced by NYC) does not take air pollution seriously and is turning a blind eye to the air polluting impact of huge developments in Malton and Norton rather than properly addressing the issue of air pollution and traffic in the towns.
The health of the public is at risk if the current approach to planning and housing development in Malton and Norton continues.
Simon Thackray, Brawby
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