North Yorkshire holiday cottage owner furious after 'factory' approved

Hambleton District Council’s planning committee approved proposals on Thursday (September 29) for a steel-framed industrial workshop to be built at Field House Equestrian on Ham Hall Lane, Scruton.

The workshop will be 38.53m x 12.34m in size and will be used for manufacturing model ship and aircraft kits out of wood and metal.

Once up and running, it would employ up to seven full-time and two part-time staff.

Equipment used in the workshop will include saws, sanders and CNC routers, hydraulic injection moulding machines, 3D printers, a lathe and a finishing/polishing machine.

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Although the workshop would operate from 8.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday, planning documents state that some machines would run continuously.

The application attracted 21 objections, with nearby residents saying a rural, agricultural site was not the place for a manufacturing workshop which would be better suited to an industrial estate.

Sarah Wright's holiday cottages are next door to the livery yard where the workshop will be built Picture: Google (Image: Google)

Sarah Wright lives next door to the livery yard where the workshop will be built and also owns two holiday cottages – converted from cow byres – which will be 25-meters away from the factory.

She fears that the industrial nature and noise produced by the model-making operation will destroy her business because the holiday cottages will no longer be the peaceful rural getaway that her customers have come to expect.

Sarah has taken the matter to her local MP Rishi Sunak and said in a letter to him: “At first, we assumed that their planning application would be refused point blank and that our residential amenity and holiday let business would be protected by the policies laid down in the recently adopted Hambleton Local Plan.

“We naively assumed that the construction of such a large, incongruous manufacturing unit in a rural location, so close to residential buildings would simply not be feasible.

“We were wrong.”

Sarah Wright outside her holiday cottages Picture: Northern Echo (Image: Echo)

Sarah said her cottages will be completely unusable as holiday lets during the workshop’s construction and feels 'aggrieved' that the proposal was passed by planners.

She said: “If the factory arrives next door to us it would severely impact on our living conditions and result in the closure of our established holiday business.”

Other objectors say the workshop would create unacceptable noise and air pollution and raised concerns about the potential danger of delivery trucks using the single track lane leading to the site.

The applicant addressed these concerns in documents submitted to the planning committee.

They state that noise reports show that the machines will not detrimentally affect nearby properties and that lighting will be no more obtrusive than already used for the livery yard business.

The applicant says that larger deliveries of raw materials would only take place around six times a year, with a maximum vehicle weight of 7.5 tonnes in keeping with the classification of the road.

Sarah Wright outside her holiday cottages Picture: Northern Echo (Image: Northern Echo)

In response to objections over the industrial nature of the site, the applicant states: “Model manufacturing is traditionally a ‘cottage industry’ operating out of a garage or garden shed.

“Despite the ‘size’ of our business, the machines we use are exactly the same as those used by ‘cottage industries’.”

Directly addressing the impact on Sarah’s holiday cottages, the applicant states: “There would be no inevitable closure of the holiday cottages given that sound surveys confirm no observed effect, I believe that the building, with the newly lowered roof, will also not be visible over the top of the boundary wall of the cottages making the appearance irrelevant.

“If bookings are cancelled and refunded this would be the choice of the owners.”

The application was approved with multiple conditions including that no machinery except the Swiss lathe can be used outside the hours of 8.30am to 17.30pm weekdays and none can be used on weekends or bank holidays.

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