Have you had a look at the massive York Central outline planning application? I have. It’s on the City of York Council website.

If you are not familiar with planning applications, you wouldn’t know where to start. Whoever drew up the documents index didn’t have a thought for members of the public wanting to read them.

Take the Design Statement. Parts 1 and 3 are listed together, followed by enough documents to fill a lever arch folder, followed by Parts 2 and 4. Surely it would have made sense to list them together.

The applicants are making sure they have ticked every box in the planning permission process.

There are endless environmental statements, transport statements, drainage proposals, statements about the impact on historic features, the city centre, details of the various stages of the development, etc, etc.

But there is one important area which the application totally ignores: the lives of future residents of York Central.

There are 2,500 homes included in the outline application which presumably will be occupied by 2,500 couples, families and households or enough people for a large village.

What do the planners think all those people will do when they are not admiring their new homes?

There are bound to be families with young children, but the application specifically excludes a new school or education facilities in its ground allocation.

The nearest school, St Barnabas’s in Leeman Road, couldn’t take the children of 2,500 extra families.

Are the applicants seriously proposing that hundreds of children aged from five upwards walk more than half a mile twice a day along busy Water End to Poppleton Road School or two miles twice a day along Water End, across the busy Clifton road and through Clifton estate to Burton Green School That’s assuming those schools will have enough room.

The adults will all want jobs. It’s highly unlikely that they will all work in the proposed hotel, the expanded National Railway Museum and the offices in the application.

So they will commute, and will need somewhere to keep their cars. Those with families will want cars for family journeys.

You can be sure the developers will prefer profit making houses over garages and the gardens will be as small as they can get away with. How many families will have to keep their cars in the proposed multi-storey car park and pay its fees?

Meanwhile many of the employees of York Central will come to work by car and will also need parking spaces.

What will the children and adults do when not working or at school?

There is a sentence or two in the application about “leisure facilities” which, when you investigate, amount to a possible gym in the office block and a hope that someone will use some of the office space for leisure activities.

Otherwise it’s a case of walk round the proposed park and admire the flowers.

There is a vague mention of a “flexible approach” to community facilities in the application.

But no ground space is allocated for a community centre where the residents can put on events, hold meetings, attend evening classes or clubs, visit a library, or indulge in indoor sports such as badminton and judo.

Where will local scouts and guides meet or are the applicants assuming they too will trek up and down Water End?

What about the retired and those needing health care? Are they going to join the walking hordes and traffic jams on Water End?

Again there is vague talk of possibly including at some unspecified date a general health centre with mention of people such as doctors, dentists etc, but no ground allocation.

The York Central planning application is all about making money today out of derelict land and forget about tomorrow.

I pity the future residents of York Central. They will live in a vast characterless dormitory and they will spend all their waking time in queues on Water End.

Why can’t York Central be used to build a community with proper community facilities?