RESIDENTS are urging their parish council to hold a referendum on a housing developing proposed for their village.

Sixteen Ampleforth residents feel they have not been properly consulted over plans to build a doctor’s surgery and eight houses on Ox Field in the village.

They say the development would ruin the view from their gardens, block out light and take away their privacy, and that building on the field would endanger rare wildlife.

Members of Ryedale District Council planning committee last week voted to delay its decision on the plans until there had been a site visit, but the residents are still concerned that they won’t be fully involved in the consultation.

The opponents of the scheme held a public meeting at which 16 people said they wanted to halt all development on green spaces in Ampleforth. They now hope to persuade the parish council to hold a referendum on the issue.

Jo Priestman, who is retired and lives in Station Road, said: “Our houses are built in a recess in the land, so with the surgery next to us, we wouldn’t be able to see any sky.

“My husband is 80 and he is in a wheelchair, and he has lived in Ampleforth for 60 years, and one of his few pleasures is sitting in the garden in the summer just looking at the fields and the sky and listening to the birds.

“I took two jobs to afford a retirement home with a view, and we are terrified of losing that.”

Kristie Leavy, a mother living in St Hilda’s Walk, said: “I’m just a tenant so I can move, but I feel for anybody who has put their life savings into a house that is going to be overshadowed by the development.”

The group says that the current doctor’s surgery could be extended onto brownfield land, and that affordable housing could also be built on brownfield land in the village in small clusters of no more than two or three homes.

They are also angry Ox Field could be developed when, for the past eight years, the farmer who owns it has been receiving a grant from the Countryside Stewardship Scheme to leave it to nature.

Mrs Priestman said: “We see corncrake, birds registered with the RSPB, families of hedgehogs, sparrowhawks and crested newts.

“What is the point of spending money preserving the space, just to build on it a few years down the line?”

John Marsh, another resident, said: “I am prepared to lose my view if everyone in the village thinks that is for the greater good, but I just don’t think there has been enough discussion or involvement.”

Ampleforth Parish Council said they were not prepared to comment on the matter at this stage in the proceedings.

A spokesman for Ryedale District Council said: “If a parish meeting is properly convened, and all the procedures followed, both in the meeting and in the calling of the meeting, then there is a legal provision for undertaking a parish poll on any question arising from that meeting.”

The spokesman said that the poll would have to be paid for by the parish council, and that they could raise council tax in the parish to pay for the poll if necessary.

He also pointed out that councillors deciding on planning matters did not have to take the result of a parish poll into consideration.