A HOUSING development featuring a mix of affordable and market housing on a site approved for housing has been given the go-ahead in Long Preston, despite resistance from the community’s leaders.

While such developments are wanted by many communities in the national park, a meeting of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s planning committee heard Long Preston Parish Council had objected to the scheme on several grounds.

Building a greater number of new homes in the national park is among the key objectives of the protected area’s management plan, with the authority pledging to work with councils, landowners, developers and local communities to try to help make this happen.

The plan states the park needs more housing to sustain its population, which is going into decline, to support the economy, the communities and the facilities they rely on, such as schools.

Despite this, relatively few housing developments are brought forward by developers, partly due to the added difficulties of building in a national park.

The meeting heard although the site, in the conservation area of Long Preston, near Settle, was being used as a public open space, it had been allocated in the national park’s Local Plan development blueprint as suitable for building up to nine homes.

Authority members were told the proposed ten-home development would include terraces of houses facing the A65 and feature two single bed apartments for affordable rent to be transferred to a Housing Association and First Homes, a kind of discounted market sale housing defined in national guidelines as “affordable housing”.

The proposed development also features a home with a principal residency restriction, to prevent it becoming a second or holiday home.

The meeting was told the rest of the properties would be offered on the open market, including two detached four-bedroom homes.

Members were told the parish council had requested a payment or agreement from the developer to replace the lost open space with additional space, despite the site not being identified as an Important Open Space through the Local Plan process.

The meeting was told the parish council’s objections also related to “the lack of parking spaces” and how the development, which would include 20 parking spaces, may add to parking pressures placed in the surrounding area.

Officers told the meeting they had concluded  the proposed access road had adequate visibility, and the number of proposed car parking spaces means that the development would not impact on road safety.

They said the proposed development would meet the aims of the Local Plan’s policy on settlements.

Ahead of members approving the scheme, member David Ireton, the chairman of North Yorkshire Council, said: “This application seems to tick all the boxes that we would expect on an allocation site.”