Letters round-up

They have kept their premises well presented, appealing and well maintained but also, most probably due to rent rises that they are expected to endure before they can make a living, are having to close down. Surely it must be better for Malton to have continuity of traders and our shops up and running rather than stood empty?

It is all well and good having the national named shops but our locals and visitors like to see and expect out of the ordinary, family-run shops which are part of being a market town, ones that aren’t found in the larger towns and cities, but these are being taken away from Malton.

Our Saturday market is diminish-ing to nearly non-existent. I visited Helmsley recently on market day and spoke to one of the stallholders, of which there must have been at least 14 stalls, why didn’t they come to Malton.

A shake of the head and a very definite “no way” was the response but they did say they went to Thirsk, Pickering, Kirkbymoorside, Northallerton and Driffield.

Why not Malton I wonder?

Lynne Morley, Norton

• Decision on fracking - we deserve better

IT was a shameful, but predictable decision by the planning committee members of North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) who gave a green light to fracking – clearly bowing to the dictates of Westminster and corporate pressures. Government claims it wants evidence-led-policy, but often the reality turns out to be “policy-led-evidence”.

There were more than 4,000 objections to the application, and just 36 in support. Yet NYCC chose to vote to approve the application to frack in Ryedale by seven votes in favour to four against.

During presentations in Northallerton, some 50 speakers presented clear evidence highlighting the wide-ranging concerns. These included:

- industrialisation of a rural area containing a national park and designated areas of outstanding natural beauty 
- inadequacies of the monitoring system to determine impacts
- disregard for existing statutory controls aimed at preventing pollution of aquifers by toxic chemicals
- government’s quest for on-going removal and burning of fossil fuels 
- extensive sections of a DEFRA report about the collateral damage to Ryedale, initially redacted by government;
- inadequate social impact assessment and serious risks to safety from increased transport
- total disregard about negative experiences elsewhere, including undeniable health impacts in Pennsylvania USA and Australia.

After two days of representations, the committee took just 20 minutes to discuss the application, in which a majority of the 11 strong committee said absolutely nothing.

The people of Ryedale deserve better.

Dr Sylvia Bernard, Appleton-le-Moors; Professor Robin Bunton, Appleton-le-Moors; Dr Liz Garthwaite, Malton; Dr Julie Hawkins, York; Dr Lesley Jones, Appleton-le-Moors; Professor Andrew Price, Appleton-le-Moors; Professor Callum Roberts, York; Dr Roderick Robinson, Leavening

• Process was flawed

THOUGH we don’t live in Ryedale, many of us from other parts of North Yorkshire attended the county council’s planning committee meetings on May 20 and May 23, because we feel your fate is also our fate. So we are devastated at what their decision to let Third Energy frack in your area will do to your lives and our county’s green countryside.

We heard excellent speeches by many Ryedale residents: we were cheering you on. But we felt incredulous at the analyses of the various county and Environmental Agency experts cited by the planning officer, who classified the damage you will endure as “slight”, “of short duration”, or as “insufficient” to form a valid basis for refusing the fracking application.

Then we realised the flaw in the whole process: the committee were instructed to consider Third Energy’s application as only for a single well, whereas we are all worried about the longer-term prospect of large-scale production and its far-more-serious potential environmental effects.

When we voiced our fears, we were called “scaremongers” fretting about imaginary possible risks, or the victims of “scaremongering” by pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth. It is unjust that your right to a healthy, traffic-free, noise and light-pollution-free life, with pure water and pure air to breathe and an unspoilt countryside to live and work in, has been taken away by the votes of just two of the seven men who approved that application.

Anne Hodge, Harrogate

• Gender bias

THE appalling decision made by members of the North Yorkshire County Council’s planning committee must be the most important and far-reaching that the county has made.

How can the strength of views expressed by so many be treated as unimportant? Of course, the composition of the committee itself revealed an outstanding and biased imbalance in its make-up in two ways.

First and foremost, although there are six of us who represent Ryedale on the county council at Northallerton, none of us was on the planning committee.

Secondly, the 11 members of the planning committee are all men, which is a really bad outlook for any decision-making: views from both genders are needed at all times to maintain sensible outcomes.

The repercussions will, and should, continue.

County Councillor Elizabeth Shields, Norton

• Opens floodgates

IT is interesting to note that there are no women on North Yorkshire County Council’s (NYCC) planning committee and not one councillor lives in or represents Ryedale.

I would have thought that such an important decision should have been voted on by the whole of the NYCC’s council.

There will now be a flood of applications from the many companies that have bought licences over the whole of the North of England, not even national parks, AONBs, and SSSIs are immune.

The companies are not in the business other than for making as much money as possible.

Jo Gibson, Terrington

• Shame on them

COLLEAGUES and I from Frack Free Pocklington and District went to Northallerton to demonstrate our support and were disgusted at the seven to four decision which opened a real can of worms.

The committee chairman’s comment “it is not for us to decide county or national policy” was disgusting.

In voting as they did they have shown complete disregard for the rest of Yorkshire and the feelings of local people and should be ashamed. They should have voted with their hearts and not toed the party line, but they obviously jumped at the crack of the party whip.

I trust voters will remember the names of the spineless seven and vote accordingly at the next council election.

As to MP Kevin Hollinrake’s comments on putting safety first, how will this be done when the Government has so drastically cut the Environmental Agency’s budget?

Roger Bruton, Pocklington

• NATO keeps peace

I’D like to address a couple of points in Peter Winter’s letter about the EU and how we should be “embracing” it.

Firstly, he is incorrect about free trade deals. The UK, or any other member state of the EU, cannot make their own free trade deals without negotiating with all the other member states first.

This makes any free trade deal a lengthy and laborious process. As for the NHS “ceasing to function” without immigration, I wonder if he is aware that less than four per cent of NHS staff are from the EU (other than the UK) and more than four per cent are from outside of the EU.

There is a massive difference between uncontrolled EU immigration, and controlled immigration from around the world, to fill the positions we need to fill. An exit from a political EU does not put a stop to required immigration, but it allows us to control numbers, and skills, of those coming here.

The EU promoting peace? NATO has kept the peace, not the EU.

Dave Beck, Norton