A PLAN to control the development of a former Second World War RAF Bomber Command station is being considered following a scheme to site a “heavy industrial” workshop winning planning permission.

Leader of Hambleton District Council, Councillor Mark  Robson, said talks would be held next week to discuss the future of the expansive Skipton on Swale Airfield site, as part of a review of the capacity of industrial estates across the area.

The move comes after the authority’s planning committee granted an application by John Walker Farm Buildings, of Kirby Sigston, near Northallerton, to build a 123m-long workshop at Crossbones Farm on the former airfield.

Councillors heard while the predominant use of the former airfield was agricultural, the site was not an allocated site for development.

The meeting was told Sandhutton Parish Council believed the scheme represented “a step change in the use of the airfield from mostly agriculture to heavy industrial”.

In a letter to the committee, Thirsk councillor Gareth Dadd said: “I would rather see this refused and a proper economic development investment plan be brought forward as a matter of urgency that would give us planned development.”

Peter Walker, for the firm, said it had outgrown its Kirby Sigston site and could not develop due to a lack of space, and several attempts to find alternative premises in the area had failed.

He said: “The scale of agriculture is rapidly increasing with larger farms, larger machinery, higher crop yields as well as increased demand. This has resulted in agricultural buildings being far larger than they hae ever needed to be in the past, requiring longer lengths of steel than we are able to handle or store in our current facility.”

Ahead of members passing the scheme, Councillor John Noone said: “We are here to support business. We need business.”