People in the Craven parish of Clapham cum Newby have voted overwhelmingly in favour of adopting a “Neighbourhood Plan”.

In a referendum held last Thursday, 153 people voted “yes” to the question, "Do you want North Yorkshire Council and Yorkshire Dales National Park to use the Neighbourhood Plan for Clapham cum Newby to help it decide planning applications in the neighbourhood area?"  

North Yorkshire Council declared the poll result on Friday.

“It shows the community is taking charge,” said parish councillor and farmer John Dawson.

The Clapham cum Newby Neighbourhood Plan will now be used to help determine planning applications and guide planning decisions in the Clapham cum Newby Neighbourhood Area.  It is only the third neighbourhood area with land inside the National Park to have adopted a Neighbourhood Plan, following Upper Eden and Gargrave, and builds on the work of the 2008 Parish Plan.

The plan has policies to protect “non-designated assets”, such as former estate worker cottages; it contains a “style guide” for new developments; and it identifies more than a dozen green spaces, including the grassy centre of the public car park, to be conserved. 

John Dawson said:   “Clapham sits uniquely in the dales because of the Ingleborough estate; it is still partly an estate village. The estate owns about forty of the houses, which historically has meant families can move in. 

“We’re also looking forward, and that’s what we’ve demonstrated with the neighbourhood plan.  It shows the community taking charge.  We’ve lost the school. We lost the shop.  But the community came together [to reopen the shop] and now there are 40 volunteers running it.

“People do want to have a say in planning.  We don’t want the unique character of this parish spoiled with houses in the wrong place or built in the wrong style.  We want to attract employment that adds to the community.  Tourism is where it hinges.” 

Clapham cum Newby Neighbourhood Plan steering group member, Anne-Marie Bond, said: “I came here nine years ago.  Before then I used to come regularly with my husband and my son. We’d come on the train from Leeds.  Everybody would chat to you.  You felt the character. 

“When we got the chance to retire here, I volunteered for Broadband for the Rural North, which was bringing fast broadband to the village, and from that got involved in the neighbourhood plan.  Everybody has a can do attitude here.” 

Steering group member Robert Klottrup added: “When we did the surveys, a lot of people kept saying, ‘We want to have a voice’.  This, the neighbourhood plan, is a way of facilitating that.   

“Clapham is a great place to live.  You walk down the street and you know everybody.  The other thing we’ve discovered talking to people is the high number of people working from home.  There’s a tremendous number of young people moving back to the parish.”

Maria Farrar said it was encouraging that the school bus taking children from the parish to the primary school in Austwick was now full.

Member Champion for Sustainable Development at the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, Richard Foster, said:  “The Clapham cum Newby Neighbourhood Plan policy on designated heritage assets really stands out. The plan identifies buildings and other heritage assets which are not listed or scheduled but which are important to the heritage of the parish and which local people want to protect from harmful development and ideally enhance. 

“It’s a really positive thing to have done. Neighbourhood planning provides communities with the power to establish their own policies to shape future development in and around where they live and work.”

 The designated Clapham cum Newby Neighbourhood Area corresponds to Clapham cum Newby Parish and is located within two Local Planning Authority Areas, the Yorkshire Dales National Park and North Yorkshire.