I WOULD like to support Alan Jones’ efforts to get Malton town issues debated.

His leaflet headed “BUM” (“Balls Up Malton.”) has a sound bite which perfectly describes how Malton is being treated by the planning and statutory authorities.

I will not repeat past comments about Wentworth Street car park, but would refer to the housing and employment issues: Malton/Norton is required to have 50 per cent of all new houses which are to be built in the district and 80 per cent of all new employment development.

This applies not just to the next 15 years, but as the Ryedale Plan is a rolling plan, if nothing is done to change it, this will roll on into perpetuity.

As regards new houses, this means for the period to 2026, 1,500-plus houses, ie probably more than 2,000, will be built.

This is in spite of Malton’s historic network of narrow roads and streets, and in spite of the clear indication that a new motorway-style intersection will not be built between the A64 and the Broughton Road in the foreseeable future, and in spite of the forecast (using established criteria) by the former highways officer, who was responsible for overseeing highways planning decisions in an area which included Ryedale for 30 years, that the cumulative impact of all planned new development in Malton and Norton would be a daily increase of more than 28,760 additional vehicular trips.

Yes, the planners want to turn Malton/Norton into a traffic jam.

This is to say nothing about other infrastructure issues, including sewerage, drainage, flooding, school capacity and doctors etc.

The situation might not be quite so bad if land for the new developments was to be allocated in a systematic and planned way.

Regrettably, this is not going to happen. Having decided that the towns shall have all this development, the council has virtually abandoned any attempt to do a proper site allocation, so that what we have now is a free-for-all.

Why has this happened? The answer is that there is a clique, mainly within the ruling Conservative group, which represents the rural parts of Ryedale.

They don’t want any more houses in their villages – thank you very much, sir. So they’ve decided to dump 90 per cent of them on the towns – 50 per cent on Malton and Norton, 35 per cent on Pickering and Kirkbymoorside and five per cent on Helmsley.

They have no concept of fairness – they are only concerned about their perception of the vested financial interests of voters in their villages.

Many of these councillors will sneer at any mention of “the environment”

as if it were a concept which only politically-correct, liberally-minded people believe in, but when it comes to new houses, they are very quick to point out the “environmental benefits” of having 90 per cent of all new houses in the towns.

In doing so, of course, they could not care less about the environmental disbenefits to residents in the towns themselves. It is pure hypocrisy.

A campaign is required to get the Ryedale Plan changed. I would like to know what people think.

Paul Andrews, Ryedale district councillor for Malton ward