JUST how much development can the A59 corridor to the west of York take?

There’s the Flaxby Green Business Park, which has recently been given planning permission; the Allerton Waste Recovery Park, due to come into operation later this month; plans for a sugar beet factory at Allerton Park; and a proposal to build a 2,700 home new town, Great Hammerton.

As if all that weren’t enough, a company called Tynedale Roadstone also wants to build an asphalt plant at Hessay, complete with hoppers, conveyors, silos, a mixing tower and an exhaust stack.

Local people are up in arms. They have launched an action group, imaginatively named AVOID - A59 Villagers Oppose Inappropriate Development. And they point out that the plant, were it to go ahead, would mean more heavy lorries on an already congested road; more noise; and more pollution.

Tynedale Roadstone insists it has addressed many of these concerns, and points out that the proposed site, within the Hessay Industrial Unit, has already been allocated for employment use. No doubt it has. But while much of the proposed development along the A59 corridor would have huge benefits - in terms of employment, housing and inward investment - somebody, at some point, needs to begin considering the cumulative impact. This is made more difficult by the fact that many of the proposals, while they will have an undoubted impact on the west of York, fall within Harrogate District.

It doesn’t help either that York, after years of trying, still has nothing resembling a local plan. But the bottom line is that the A59 is already busy, congested and dangerous enough. If all these proposals do go ahead, we’ll essentially end up with a ribbon of industrial and housing development stretching west from York most of the way to Knaresborough. Is that really what we want?