ALMOST one hundred villagers have staged a demonstration outside a council headquarters against plans for a huge new settlement near York.

A protest group from Green Hammerton and Kirk Hammerton also posed a question to a senior Harrogate Borough Councillor at a council meeting on Wednesday evening.

The authority recently launched a fresh consultation into Harrogate’s draft Local Plan, which includes controversial proposals for a 2,700-home new settlement to help meet the district’s housing needs.

Council officials have said land between the two Hammertons is their preferred location for the settlement, which has been dubbed ‘Great Hammerton’.

The Keep Green Hammerton Green action group claims an alternative site to the west at Flaxby would be a much better location.

Group chair Chris Chelton asked at the meeting how the council could reassure residents that its recommendation was not being driven by the ‘flawed calculation of a higher Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) income’ to the authority.

Cabinet Member for Planning, Cllr Rebecca Burnett, said such income was not taken into account when developing the recommendation and was a ‘red herring’.

She said the decision had been ‘based on an assessment of a full and proper range of planning matters and has not been driven by any future thoughts as to CIL revenue’.

Mr Chelton said afterwards he was not satisfied with her response, claiming CIL was a key element of one of two reports on which the planning policy team had based their recommendations.