A village suffering from floods of sewage and a lack of suitable housing to maintain a community looks set to get both long-term issues tackled through a housing development.
An unusual proposal to build an estate of 69 affordable homes, including buy-to-rent properties, and just a single market value house in East Cowton, between Darlington and Northallerton, has been unanimously approved by North Yorkshire Council, despite ongoing concerns about aggravating long-term flooding issues.
While North Yorkshire councillors regularly raise concerns over developers seeking to maximise profits by building as many executive-style homes as possible, some 83 per cent of the East Cowton development, to be managed by social housing provider Karbon Homes, is made up of one, two and three-bed properties.
Although many village residents are often opposed to larger developments on grounds of the landscape impact, the meeting of the authority’s Richmond constituency planning committee heard little mention that the application site was an open agricultural field.
Councillors said the public benefits of the scheme outweighed it failing to meet all of the requirements of policy due to scale harming East Cowton’s character.
The meeting was told more than a decade ago East Cowton Parish Council had vowed not to support any major development in the village until the sewage issues were tackled.
During heavy rain the village storage tanks soon become full, which backs up the drains in Daykn Close, where the properties were built “in a bowl”.
While Yorkshire Water has tried to resolve this problem by building a tank below the green, flooding remains a problem during times of heavy
rainfall.
Councillor Stephen Watson, who has lived in the village for more than 30 years, said the proposed solution would collect water from the lowest point in the village, acting similarly to a plug hole.
An agent for the developer told housing the new mains sewer would reduce the volume of surface water going into the village pumping station by 36,500 litres per storm.
The meeting was told residents’ had legitimate concerns about surface water flooding after heavy rainfall being exacerbated by the development and the developers had proposed a new mains solution where it was most needed to prevent sewage backing up into houses and gardens.
Councillor Elaine Simpson, of East Cowton Parish Council, said it was accepted that the development needed to be larger than had previously been envisaged for the village for it to be commercially viable and provide the flooding infrastructure.
She said it would provide the much-needed housing types and tenures, as suggested by residents, to enable young people to remain living in the village.
She said since significant developments in the 1970s, new housing in East Cowton had been limited to about a dozen “single infills, all of a large property type”.
Coun Simpson: “Without a growing population the village won’t flourish and the school needs an influx of children, other businesses need local support and community groups need people to help them thrive.
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