CAMPAIGNERS have won their bid for a public inquiry into plans for a village green to be held in their neighbourhood.

The Friends Of Osbaldwick Meadows says the inquiry, due to last four days, will be held at Burnholme Community College, York, starting at 10am on February 12.

Spokesman Mark Warters said today the inquiry was originally set to be staged in the city centre, but the Friends successfully argued at a pre-inquiry hearing earlier this week that this would be inconvenient for residents from the Osbaldwick and Tang Hall areas who wanted to attend.

The Friends want an area of open land at Metcalfe Lane, Osbaldwick, to be registered as a village green, saying this would block plans by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) to build Derwenthorpe, a 540-home model village.

The scheme, which the JRF says would alleviate York's housing shortage, was given the go-ahead by the Government last year after a public inquiry.

But the Friends believe that village green status would effectively overturn that decision, and enable them to turn the site into a nature reserve.

Mr Warters said they planned at the inquiry to raise comments made in a recent City of York Council Open Space, Sport And Recreation study about a shortage of open space in Osbaldwick.

He said the document said the council should "consider opportunities to address deficiencies to natural and semi-natural open space within Osbaldwick, Clifton and central areas of the city".

He said the Friends would question why, given this statement, the council was supporting the loss of the only major area of open space in Osbaldwick to housing.

The green inquiry was originally due to be held last autumn but was postponed, at the last minute, after the Friends withdrew their application to North Yorkshire County Council and submitted a fresh one to City of York Council.

The Friends said they had discovered the county council had wrongly been handling village green registrations on York's behalf for more than a decade.

Nigel Ingram, a JRF director, said then that, although he was disappointed at the latest delay to the proposals, he was heartened to hear the inspector recommended that any subsequent inquiry was dealt with "expeditiously".

"Derwenthorpe has much to offer York in terms of high-quality family housing, which this city so desperately needs," he said.

A City of York Council spokeswoman said that, in response to campaigners' concerns, it had changed the venue for the inquiry from Bedern Hall to Burnholme Community College.

"We will be advertising the arrangements in The Press under public notices in the next few days and will be writing to applicants and objectors to inform everyone about the arrangements," she said.

She added: "The land in question is allocated for residential development on the Development Control Local Plan and the development proposal from JRF has been through a planning inquiry and has been approved by the government minister, having been supported by an independent planning inspector."