AS the world watches the World Cup faraway and le Tour closer to home, our own town hosts a race to save it from being swamped by development, with days ticking to the next deadline of Friday, July 18 (or Sunday, July 20, if you trust Ryedale District Council to handle your email on a Sunday) for objections to the Castle Howard Road/Middlecave Road development.

Our legal experts are poring over every aspect of this application for our residents’ group, as can you at Ryedale House by appointment, and if you email ianconlan1@gmail.com, we will send sample objection letters. Because these need to be emailed to the council by the deadline, be sure to tell them you are sending both email and a hard copy to them, us, and your local councillor also, to ensure it does not get “lost”.

Local meetings are also being organised, likely Tuesday evenings, and West Malton will be leafleted over the coming days, so don’t throw it away, unless you want to throw away your chance to save our small market town from traffic gridlock, bigger queues, worse air pollution, and huge swathes of new houses.

Meanwhile, quietly beavering away are town councillors on a special neighbourhood plan committee, meeting fortnightly and racing to produce a plan for consultation on sites that residents themselves decide the scale and location of development within the framework of the Ryedale District Council Local Plan of 1,500 houses for Malton and Norton over 15 years.

And in another corner, is Ryedale District Council working on a sites allocation document starting with – the villages. The document is to be ready in the autumn for consultation, to be completed April 2015.

Now I ask you, if you wanted to ensure your document missed the boat, what would you do? Overload the case officer and then sit back and watch the developers carve up Malton. Who is going to win this race? Well, there is more than the big players in this race. There is you and me, the little people, and the small matter of legal process. Object now to the development on legally watertight planning grounds.

Also, the democratic process can be used. Write to the MP, Ann McIntosh, and your local councillor.

The race is not yet over. But time is ticking away. Have your say and get those objections in. The future shape of Malton depends on it. Will Malton still be desirable in 10 years time? You decide.

Ian Conlan, Malton