AS my family and have been residents of Castlegate for 15 years and I have a business in Malton and now Norton, I feel qualified to add to the current debate regarding the Air Quality Management Area (AQMA) in Malton.

For more than a decade I have been in constant dialogue with the council and have found its approach to public health astonishing.

Residents are exhausted with the lack of support. Backed up traffic, noisy car stereos, any resident will tell you that you can literally taste the pollution. The council has always had an opportunity to act and has done nothing except more surveys. Act now for all our sakes. Make some difficult decisions. We can challenge the current way of thinking.

We should not feel intimidated by large wagons on the pavements, etc. We have a train station, bus station, three supermarkets, a river bridge and a railway crossing, mixed in with a road junction that it seems no one truly understands all within five hundred yards, and all presumably gone through the planning process.

How were the supermarkets allowed to expand without any concession to the traffic issue? Yet the danger to public health and time wasted stuck in traffic seems to be not of concern.

This busy part of town has no desire to remain the dumping ground for boarded up shops, backed up traffic and run down housing, and unless something is done, and soon, then it might just be too late.

Now is the time to force sensible and proportionate developer contributions to ease the situations where they are building. Now is the time to hold those accountable who take risks with public health, and if they don’t then now is the time for us all to take direct action to show that these opportunities for change are precious and should not be hostage to local political differences.

Jason Aldrich, Malton

Better off in EU

HERE in the Yorkshire and the Humber region, like the rest of Britain, we see many benefits of our continued relationship with Europe.

The EU is Britain’s largest market. British exports to the EU accounted for £229 billion in 2014. Here in Yorkshire and the Humber, we exported £8.4 billion worth of goods to the EU in 2014, which equates to 49 per cent of the total goods exported.

In the last five years, there have been 157 investment projects from the EU in Yorkshire and the Humber, creating or protecting almost 12,000 jobs. And we have companies like Santander and Haribo investing in the Yorkshire and the Humber region.

Nationally, many independent studies have shown that more than three million jobs in Britain are linked to Britain’s trade with Europe. HM Treasury has broken down the figures into regions and as a result, here in the Yorkshire and the Humber region, 250,000 jobs are linked to the trade with the EU.

With such investment from the EU, we believe that Britain is stronger, safer and better off in Europe than out on its own. We risk our prosperity, threaten our safety and diminish our influence in the world. The benefits clearly outweigh the risks. I therefore urge the residents of Yorkshire and the Humber to make the right decision on June 23.

Kamran Hussain, chairman of Yorkshire and Humber Liberal Democrats Policy & EU Referendum Campaign

A democratic issue

FRACKING may be a major health and economic issue in Ryedale. But it is also a major democratic one.

What about those who voted for our MP Kevin Hollinrake because of his promise before the election not to promote fracking at the risk of our health and well-being? And what about the very substantial number of Ryedale residents of whatever political party who do not want this disastrous industry in Ryedale?

This number includes numerous parish councillors, the town councils of Malton, Norton, Kirkbymoorside, Helmsley and Pickering, as well as Ryedale district council. Do Kevin Hollinrake, Andrea Leadsom, Amber Rudd and others in Westminster not represent them?

A democracy is not representative when it ignores the informed views of a large number of its citizens and when its elected representatives promote meetings that are closed to the public. And this at a time when the latest DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) report finds that only 19 per cent across the country are pro-fracking.

Ryedale deserves better than this.

Robert Field, Gilling East

Fracking woes

YOUR correspondent (Embrace change from fracking, Gazette & Herald, May 4) argues that “fracking is coming” – the proof, the Environment Agency has granted a permit – QED.

Many of us, however, are still trusting that democracy will win the day, and that North Yorkshire County Council will reject the application to hydraulically fracture in Ryedale, a beacon of hope for those in the rest of the UK not dazzled by the money offered by an industry motivated by greed rather than an altruistic concern for energy security.

The “new ideas”, “new opportunities” and “new challenges” we are urged to embrace must surely be opportunities which further the common good of humanity, not the sectional interests of corporate power.

We must indeed “move on”, move on to a planet in which unseen forces no longer threaten the air we breathe, the water we drink, the land which feeds us, the animal and natural environment which nourishes the human spirit — a planet where all human beings can live in mutual respect seizing those new opportunities and challenges presented by the need to eradicate, not consolidate, inequality and poverty.

Mr Kennedy was not thinking of narrow national interest when he made the statement referred to, but to goals held by both the US and the Federal Republic of Germany: “peace and freedom for all men, for all time, in a world of abundance, in a world of justice”.

The Faustian pact with corporate greed, advocated by your correspondent, must be decisively rejected as the enemy of peace, freedom and justice, and not blindly accepted as inevitable.

David Cragg-James, Stonegrave

Drilling concerns

IN 2015, the government sold Petroleum Exploration and Development Licences to Ineos (among several others), allowing them the right to frack most of the Derwent Ward that I represent on Ryedale District Council.

Ineos Shale has just announced, “We are firing the starting gun on our programme” and are preparing to carry out 3D seismic surveys of the area this summer, before lodging planning applications for core drilling later this year.

Information with the tender advert for seismic surveying suggests that the company is considering many wells in each licence area.

A licence well density example suggested 30 well sites in a 10x10km licence block, with up to 396 horizontal wells.

If you have concerns about the fracking process, you can refuse access to your land for any related activity. Don’t just take my word for it, investigate the industry for yourself.

Look at the independent, unbiased reporting on drillordrop.com and also check the safety record of Ineos. Perhaps even ponder about the frequent floods and droughts associated with man-made climate change.

If you value clean water, fresh air and your quality of life, stand in the green and pleasant land, look at the quiet narrow lanes and ask yourself: “Is fracking a benevolent rural pursuit or a heavily industrial process?”

Councillor Mike Potter, Pickering

Don’t ruin county

CAN anyone imagine Ryedale where the vegetation has died back, the moorland suffering the same fate, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway running trains up the Valley of Death into Whitby to enjoy eating poisoned fish (from the contaminated water that flows into the North Sea) and chips (potatoes grown on contaminated soil)?

What sort of life is that?

Not only does it affect us, it will do damage for the whole of North Yorkshire and the council on the whole.

Please don’t destroy God’s own Yorkshire and let the Devil use it as his playground.

Jarvis Browning, Fadmoor

Election result

THE general public do not like elections where those taking part “get personal”.

This form of practice is very negative and puts off people from taking part in elections, our democratic right.

I am very pleased therefore that Mike Pannett did not get elected as the Police Commissioner for our area. This was a win for sensible, good canvassing.

By the way, this area is the safest in the country and long may Julia Mulligan keep it that way in her second term.

Oh yes, she is local too. Much nearer the centre of the area.

Robert Churton, Stillington

Traffic pollution

WHILE aware of the sterling work being done by Simon Thackray in the field of pollution, may I add my recent problems?

The build-up of heavy goods traffic in the Victoria Road, Lower Middlecave area is causing we old codgers a lot of breathing and chest complaints.

Due to the two large building sites most of the heavy goods being supplied there come off the A64 along our roads.

I rang Ryedale District Council this week and spoke to the correct department who offered no help and would not even conduct a test on our road.

My suggestion that a slip road off the Hovingham road to the A64 was met with “it will never happen”.

How does he know?

Bashing – heads – brick walls comes to mind when the likes of Simon Thackray and Councillor Paul Andrews try to make our world a better place. Let’s hope for better things to come.

Alan Jones, Malton

Don’t just blame youth

LITTERING in and around Malton and Norton is certainly a problem (Gazette & Herald, May 4), not least in Menethorpe Lane, but it is quite wrong to assume that young people are doing all of it.

A healthy collaboration started here when various dog walkers began picking up rubbish and putting it in piles. I hung rubble sacks near the regular parking spots. We all do our bit about collecting and I recycle it. Menethorpe Lane has never looked nicer.

One of our litterers who didn’t fit the generally assumed profile brought his rubbish all the way from a small village near Hull. I know that because, along with yoghurt pots and other detritus, he discarded personal correspondence from his bank, including a pin number and his full address.

We were puzzled by the large number of empty half whisky bottles being thrown into the hedges. Last week I found myself driving down the lane behind a van I had often seen parked.

Suddenly one such bottle flew out of the window, propelled high over a stone wall and into a field of wheat. The driver was no young lad. It was an elderly man from a nearby village.

It is clear that people of all types and ages are responsible for littering the roadsides.

Please don’t just blame our young people.

Emma Brooksbank, Menethorpe

May Day Fair thanks

MAY I, through your paper, thank the lovely people who gave their time to support us at Alba Rose on our May Day Fair. We raised £780, and the proceeds will be split between the resident’s amenity fund and the Friends of St Joseph’s School, who entertained us all with their Maypole dancing and jointly set up and ran the fair — thank you very much.

Could I also thank everyone who knitted some red, white and blue bunting for us, which is currently decorating the home.

It looks fabulous, and if anyone would like to visit us to see it, please come along. Thank you once again to all involved.

Jo Yardy, recreation facilitator, Alba Rose

The odds appear to be stacked against us

HEAR, hear Graham Carter (Zoning in on speeding, Gazette & Herald, April 27).

How refreshing to read a clear and balanced view on the hot topic on the introduction of more mobile police safety cameras. I am sure many people are of a similar opinion, but unable to articulate their true feelings after having been inculcated by the police camera hyperbole.

Perhaps they could deploy these smaller more easy to conceal vehicles at flytipping blackspots where I suspect they may catch the hard core polluters of our countryside red handed, or on our streets after the bars turn out to witness anti-social behaviour?

Somehow I do not think that will happen and I wonder why?

No, as a softer option, they are preferring to target motorists with the prospect of bemused transgressors adding to the swelling coffers without a whimper.

As an individual I would like to see some easily accessible redress procedure, to find out when the camera was last calibrated for example, without having to elect to have a court hearing to do so. The odds appear to be firmly stacked against us.

Stephen Kowalewicz, Norton