Campaign victory after four years

3:40pm Friday 25th July 2008

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CAMPAIGNERS were today celebrating victory in a four-year battle against plans for new flats and sheltered homes on the outskirts of York.

After a three-day public inquiry, a planning inspector has dismissed the Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution’s appeal against City Of York Council’s decision to reject an outline application for Connaught Court, in Fulford.

The institution, which operates Connaught Court, applied to the authority for permission to build new flats and more sheltered homes, to extend the elderly mentally frail unit, to relocate the bowling green and to create a new access road and parking.

Local residents, Fulford Friends and Fulford Parish Council chairwoman Verna Campbell had called on the Government-appointed inspector, Jennifer Vyse, to quash the appeal. The inspector has now done this, saying that the development would cause “significant harm to the character and appearance of the area”. Constance Smith, co-chair of Fulford Friends, said: “This is a well-deserved victory after a hard four-year battle. The plans for Connaught Court would have caused terrible damage to the heart of our village.

“The council is now consulting on whether the Fulford Village Conservation Area should be extended to include the Connaught Court parkland.”

Ms Campbell said the parish council stressed at the inquiry last month that the site was the last sizeable expanse of parkland visible from the A19 between the by-pass and the city centre, and that it served to separate Fulford from the rest of the city. In a report on her decision, Ms Vyse said she was “firmly of the opinion” that the siting of the proposed sheltered accommodation block would intrude into and foreshorten important views out from the adjacent conservation area, across the appeal site. She concluded that, while the site utilised previously developed land, and would provide extra care sheltered accommodation, “Those findings do not…outweigh the significant harm to the character and appearance of the area, including the adjacent Fulford Village Conservation Area, that I have identified would be a consequence of the development proposed.”

Andrew White, director of properties for the RMBI, said: “The real losers in all of this are the vulnerable frail older people, including those with Alzheimer’s and dementia, who will not now be able to benefit from the improved facilities we had planned to provide.”

Mr White said the RMBI was encouraged by the fact that the inspector made it clear that the land was developable. But he said: “We are surprised at the weight the inspector gave to the proximity of the conservation area. None of the buildings we were proposing were in the conservation area.”

He said conservation specialists had advised that “there is no justification whatsoever for the extension of the Fulford Village Conservation Area.”

He said the RMBI would be returning to the planning committee with new proposals in due course.