“Good night” Knights?…. as St. John’s College submits multi million pound sports ground plan for Haxby Road

 

York St. John’s College has submitted a planning application which would see the construction of a sports hall with associated changing, teaching and social facilities following demolition of the pavilion at the Mille Crux Sport Park.

Master plan for Haxby Road sports centre

Master plan for Haxby Road sports centre

The sports hall will be the equivalent in size to 5 badminton courts and will incorporate changing rooms, a “strength and conditioning” suit, flexible teaching space and catering facilities.

The proposal is the third part of the development of the sports park on the 24 hectare site on Haxby Road

It was granted planning permission 2 years ago

Full details of the current application can be found by clicking here

Ironically both the planning applications make mention of the York Knights RFL side saying that they are users of the facility.

There were indeed high hopes of a link up in 2013 as part of the Community Stadium deal but that relationship seems to have gone sour.

The York Council is apparently refusing to talk to the Knights owner following an acrimonious legal wrangle which ended a couple of months ago.

The Knights in turn are saying that they want a guarantee of being able to play games at Bootham Crescent until the new Community Stadium is completed.

Given that the Community Stadium project is already 2 years behind the schedule agreed in 2010 that may not be an unreasonable request.

It is about time that both sides sat down and talked through a solution.

York Local Plan hits political buffers

 

Any hope, that York’s Local Plan might be agreed for submission to an “examination in public” before the Council elections are due to take place in May seem to have disappeared today.

Big City Our City logot

Labour Councillors refused at a meeting today to remove Cllr Watt – who now sits as an Independent – from the Local Plan Working Group.

They chose to take that line after Watt agreed to back their “Big City” house building plans.

For the next couple of weeks at least, Cllr Watt would be able to attend working group meetings provided he continues to toe the Labour Party line.

The Conservatives will have only one seat on the working group (although, under proportional representation, they are legally entitled to two)

The next Local Plan meeting is not scheduled to take place until 29th January.

Little divine inspiration or common sense on show at today's meeting. click to access

Little divine inspiration or common sense on show at today’s meeting. click to access

 It is to be hoped that the political groups find an accommodation before the “Urgency” committee next meets on 19th January.

Today’s ill tempered meeting will be best remembered for tit for tat accusations about individual Councillors “misbehaviour”. The allegations should more properly have been raised at the specialist “standards committee”.

The promise of the new Labour Leader, to encourage debate about issues rather than personalities, seems to have fallen flat on its face. The “part time” Labour Leader (Williams) was noticeable by his absence from today’s meeting.

York Labour to go for London based candidate?

It looks like Hugh Bayley’s replacement, as a Labour candidate to be the City’s MP, will be a Trades Union official who is based in London.

Labour telegraph

Speculation had mounted, that an outsider would be parachuted into the York Central constituency, when Labour decided to impose an “all woman” shortlist on its members.

Amongst those vying for support is understood to be a senior UNITE trades union official with a specialist interest in the health services.

Labour is heavily dependant on Unions like UNITE for its funding.

The Tories have already selected a London based man to be their candidate.

This leaves  LibDem Nick Love @NickLovesYork as the only York resident selected as a candidate for the contest by any of the major parties.