DURING the recent debate over future housing proposals in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, particularly the contentious blueprint for Threshfield, it was interesting to hear that one of the arguments in favour of the potential scheme is (briefly) that new homes are needed to ensure the national park has a workforce for the future.

Those of us with long memories will recall that the national park has in the past instituted some very restrictive policies on new housing.

These include a set of rules from the early 1990s termed, I believe, an Interim Housing Policy, which was said to be a response to a crisis of overdevelopment in some Dales communities, though I also seem to recall that very little actual evidence was produced to show that such a crisis existed.

I cannot help wondering whether a slightly more flexible approach in the past might have put us in a better position now, perhaps with new homes spread a little more evenly across the national park than the present plans appear to envisage?

Some may say that I am just dragging up past history, but I would contend that one feature of history is to show us that past decisions can still be having an impact decades after they were made.

Present decisions makers, both in the national park and beyond, will no doubt bear this in mind when they draw up their policies for the future.

Andrew Hitchon,

Littondale.