AN ACTION group has vowed to continue fighting against PGL’s plans to build a children’s activity centre in the heart of their village.

Hambleton District Council’s planning committee granted permission for PGL to transform the former North Yorkshire Police headquarters at Newby Wiske Hall into an adventure holiday centre with in-house accommodation and outdoor activities.

Despite the application being approved by the planning committee, Newby Wiske Action Group members say they are exploring avenues that could see the sale halted to allow alternative buyers to be considered.

They have obtained minutes from a meeting of the Police and Crime Panel –which oversees the work of Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan who first pledged to sell the hall – that reveal the site is being sold to PGL for £2.5million.

That information was briefly available to the public in the report of the May meeting before being redacted.

Action Group member Charles Bennett believes the amount falls several millions short of Newby Wiske Hall’s true value and says that developers other than PGL would be “queuing up” to buy the property and grounds at that price.

Fellow Action Group member David Stockport has spent months gathering evidence and submitting Freedom of Information requests to ensure that the public is fully-informed over meetings that took place between PGL, council and police representatives throughout the sale and planning process.

Mr Stockport says he is particularly concerned about the council’s Environmental Health Department’s apparent U-turn over acceptable noise levels from the proposed PGL centre, after an initial report stated that noise from the outdoor activities would be intrusive to nearby residents.

Following the planning approval on November 16, Ms Mulligan said she was “pleased” that permission was granted but accepted it was not a universally popular decision.

She said: “Newby Wiske Hall was not fit as a modern police headquarters, and was also very expensive to run, costing approximately £1million a year to maintain.

“I understand that the decision will not be popular with some villagers having met with a number of them, but I have made it clear that my door is always open.

“I still however believe that selling the hall is the right thing to do, allowing North Yorkshire taxpayers to benefit in a number of ways, as well as bringing economic benefits to Hambleton.”

The PGL centre is set to create more than 100 jobs.