PROPOSALS for a travellers’ site outside City of York Council’s HQ are set to be turned down by planners – as are separate bids for a “monument to mismanagement” statue nearby.

Last autumn, Independent Osbaldwick councillor Mark Warters submitted the two applications, widely seen as a prank, in conjunction with York architect Matthew Laverack.

They claimed the three-pitch site on the forecourt outside the HQ, West Offices, would help meet a desperate need for a disadvantaged group, make a better use of the brownfield land and was preferable to allocating greenbelt sites for such a purpose.

Their proposed marble statue on a red granite pedestal in Station Rise would be a life-sized “monument to mismanagement”, dedicated to the person who voters in a planned public poll considered most responsible for “fiascos which have afflicted York”.

Reports by officials to next Thursday’s area planning committee recommend refusal for both schemes. One report says that “horse grazing, dog area and scrap metal” at the travellers’ site would have an unacceptable impact on the trees and ornamental planting, which was designed to provide an attractive approach to the council’s HQ.

It says English Heritage had objected, claiming it would “fail to sustain and enhance the significance of the grade II* building”.

Development management officer Kevin O’Connell’s report says that while there is a shortfall in gipsy and traveller pitches, the West Office proposals were “incompatible with the existing land use, wholly unsuitable for their intended purpose and would provide a very poor standard of amenity for the occupiers”.

A separate report by Development Management Officer Fiona Mackay says the proposed statue would “undermine and harm the high communal and artistic significance of 19th and 20th century statues, memorials and other heritage assets within the immediate area of the application site, which enrich the lives of citizens and visitors to York”.