Heronby is back with 3,500 homes off the A19 near Escrick. Halt Heronby says the promised schools, healthcare and roads cost tens of millions: who pays?
Heronby, the new town proposed just off the A19 near Escrick and Stillingfleet, is back on the table, this time with 3,500 homes and a pitch built around what its promoters call “Generation Limbo”. Residents campaigning against it say nothing that sank the last version has been fixed.
The Halt Heronby action group, which brings together residents of Riccall, Escrick, Stillingfleet and Deighton, their parish councils and local landowners, set out its response in a press release sent to The York Times on Tuesday 6 October.
“All that has changed is the new glossy presentation”
The group’s central point is that the scheme has been here before. It says the previous proposal was removed from the Local Plan after concerns from York Council and highways authorities, including National Highways.
“There is an irony here,” the group says. “Heronby itself has spent years in limbo because fundamental questions about traffic, infrastructure and deliverability were never satisfactorily answered.”
“The fundamental problem with Heronby has not disappeared. All that has changed is the new glossy presentation.”
The infrastructure question
The new proposal promises schools, healthcare, a park and ride and major road improvements. Halt Heronby’s objection is not to the list but to the absence, as it sees it, of any way of paying for it.
“These are not inexpensive additions to a masterplan,” the group says. “They are major pieces of public infrastructure costing tens of millions of pounds, and they cannot simply be conjured into existence by putting them on a plan.”
To show the scale, it points to costs from other schemes:
- a new secondary school at the 3,500-home Burgess Hill Northern Arc development required an £18 million investment;
- health provision associated with a comparable 4,000-home development was estimated at £3.8 million;
- road improvements or a bypass on the A19 are estimated at £25 million or more.
The first two figures come from developments elsewhere, not from Heronby’s own plans; the group gives them as a guide to what similar promises have cost. The release does not say who produced the A19 estimate.
“It is not enough to say that schools, healthcare, park-and-ride facilities and major road improvements are proposed,” the group says. “There must be a realistic funding mechanism, a responsible authority, secured contributions and a clear timetable for delivery.”
“Of course we need more homes”
The campaigners stop short of opposing new housing outright. “Of course we need more homes,” they say. “But that does not mean every greenfield site is suitable.”
“If Heronby really has solved the problems that previously stopped it being included in the Local Plan, let the evidence prove it. Until then, perhaps ‘Generation Limbo’ is the wrong slogan. Heronby seems perfectly capable of keeping itself there.”
The group has described Heronby as a “damaging and unnecessary ‘new’ town” of up to nearly 4,000 homes; the figure in the current pitch, according to its release, is 3,500. The release does not name the promoters or link to their new proposals.
What it means for you
If you live in Escrick, Stillingfleet, Riccall or Deighton, or use the A19 between York and Selby, the questions Halt Heronby is asking are the ones to put to the promoters as their proposals come forward: who would pay for each school, health centre and road scheme, who would be responsible for building it, and when. The group’s press contact is Phil Wade of Wade Consulting, at philwade60@gmail.com.
York residents also have their own Local Plan consultation open now, on the York Local Plan 2045, with comments closing on 8 November.
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