YORK'S Derwenthorpe saga has taken a new twist after a councillor chairing a transport group resigned and walked out during a meeting.

Hull Road city councillor Roger Pierce said he quit his role as chairman after "heated words" over a consultant's report into ways of preventing construction traffic going through Tang Hall en route to the model village. The meeting is understood to have been abandoned after his departure.

Coun Pierce said he had been appointed to chair a traffic and transport sub-group, which formed part of a Derwenthorpe Partnership Advisory Committee set up by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to examine issues surrounding the new 540-home community on York's eastern outskirts.

But he was having no more involvement now because he believed the consultants had been unduly negative and biased against his proposal to keep construction lorries out of Tang Hall for the next seven years.

The development comes just weeks after the foundation finally got the green light to begin constructing Derwenthorpe, following a public inquiry into residents' calls for the site to be registered as a village green.

Work has started on preparing the land between Osbaldwick and Tang Hall for building.

Many local residents have strongly opposed the scheme because of concerns about traffic going past their homes into and out of the site.

Coun Pierce stressed he was fully supportive of Derwenthorpe, but had concerns about the impact on Tang Hall residents of construction traffic using their roads for seven years.

He said he had called at a previous group meeting for consultants to look at bringing construction traffic into the site along a former light railway track.

But he felt the resulting report showed the idea had not been properly and fairly considered, and the consultants had taken a biased stance against the proposal from the start.

Jacquie Dale, the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust's director of housing and community services, said today it had accepted the report, which it had commissioned from independent and experienced consultants to consider the possibility of constructing a temporary road for construction traffic to Derwenthorpe crossing land from the east of the site.

"We are disappointed that Coun Pierce has decided to resign as chair of traffic and transport sub-group of the Derwenthorpe Partnership Advisory Committee," she said.

"We appreciate the importance of good management of construction traffic to the site and, together with our contractors, will seek to minimise the impact on local residents - who are being given the opportunity to comment on our proposals."

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