In recent months we have heard increasingly of the need for economic growth and its role in raising living standards and improving health outcomes. We will hear much more about this in the coming years. Some might ask ‘what has economic growth got to do with local government reorganisation?’ The answer is: everything. 

In North Yorkshire, on the 1 April, seven district councils – Craven, Hambleton, Harrogate, Richmondshire, Ryedale, Scarborough and Selby – ceased to exist and were subsumed into a new North Yorkshire Unitary Council.

We currently know very little about the structure, mechanisms, protocols and key appointments, albeit this will come with time. The new council will need to work closely with Leeds and York and will be responsible for a vast geography totalling 803,700ha, an area with a population of 618,800. 

Over the next 15 years at least 37,000 new homes and 240ha of new business premises are required to cater for the needs of the population, the economy and future wealth generation.

It is therefore worrying that one of the crucial mechanisms by which these outcomes are delivered will now be in a state of flux, possibly for years. The unitary council will prepare a new Local Plan which identifies and allocates land for development. It is estimated that this new process will take five years. This is debatable. The scale of the task is too large for what is always a glacial process, even in more manageable circumstances. The task could take the best part of 10 years. So the key question is: what happens in the meantime?

The needs of North Yorkshire cannot be frozen in time while this process takes place. In some cases where a former district council has an up-to-date Local Plan, this will form the basis of decision making in the very near term. Other former districts have Local Plans which are already out of date and some are unlikely to continue with draft Plans from the 1 April. In all cases, any remnants of a policy framework will very quickly become out of date and we will need a new approach.

Therefore, if ever there was a time for planners and the property industry to refocus on outcomes rather than process, that time is now. Planners in the new unitary council need to get on the front foot and exercise the inherent flexibilities that are built into the planning system which are rarely used. We need to start approving good, well thought out, well located sustainable development proposals. This will require professional and political leadership, and difficult planning judgements a lot of the time. The alternative is that the needs of North Yorkshire and beyond will go unmet, with consequences for all of us who need somewhere to live and work.

Further information

Contact Adam Key