CAMPAIGNERS against plans for a huge new settlement west of York are planning to stage a candle-lit protest outside a council meeting in Harrogate tonight.

Residents of Green Hammerton, Kirk Hammerton and Whixley want to show the strength of feeling before Harrogate Borough Council meets to consider and vote on the authority’s draft Local Plan.

A spokeswoman for the Keep Green Hammerton Green protest group claimed that through a ‘flawed rationale’, planners had recommended building 3,000 new houses on prime agricultural land and greenfield sites around the villages, "despite poor transport links, no local jobs, no infrastructure, an already very busy A59 that can’t cope with existing traffic and the potential destruction of three ancient villages and close communities".

The Press reported last month how planners insisted the massive development to meet the district’s future housing need should be based in the Hammerton area under the Local Plan, despite huge local protests.

One possible site is land between Green Hammerton and Kirk Hammerton, which has been dubbed Great Hammerton.

But officers said an alternative site at nearby Cattal, named Maltkiln Village by developers, should also be considered fully.

The move disappointed the Keep Green Hammerton Green campaign group, which argued strongly in a summer public consultation that the settlement should instead be built on a third possible site, a disused golf course alongside the A1 and A59 at Flaxby.

The officers said in a report that the Hammerton area had direct and convenient access to the Leeds-Harrogate-York rail corridor, providing opportunities for sustainable travel and also had convenient access onto the A59 for local bus services and to the highways network.

They said it was located close to existing village settlements which provided some local services, which could assist in the very early phases of development to provide for day to day needs, and was away from the noise of the A1.