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Village Design Statement

Please click on this link to view the full document Settrington VDS

This document started life at the turn of the century as a ‘Parish Plan’, setting out to answer as a village community three simple questions:

  1.       Where have we come from?
  2.        Where are we now?
  3.        Where are we going?

To examine the issues presented by items 2 and 3, five community working groups were established to review, record and make recommendations on:

  1.        Landscape, ecology, trees, etc.
  2.        Roads, footpaths, verges, ditches, boundary walls, fences. etc.
  3.        Road signs & names, addresses, overhead cables, streetlights, etc.
  4.        Recreation, sports and play areas
  5.        Building appraisal and guidelines, future developments, etc.

    ‘Taken as a whole this is one of the really fine villages in the area which cry out for a policy of protection to retain their beauty, not only for the present inhabitants, but also futurity.’

The complete VDS is presented in the Parish Council section of the village website; together with a ‘History of Settrington’, which answers in more detail the question ‘Where have we come from?’ posed in item 1 above. 

To that end, the essence of the community’s feeling expressed in the document is embodied in the report (appended in the VDS) written by Francis F Johnson & Partners of Bridlington (architects of the rebuilt Settrington House), commissioned by the Parish Council in 1984. The report gave a very clear warning of the dangers the settlement faced, and still faces, from modern pressures. Its summary paragraph states:

That purpose is ‘to make observations’ which give ‘supplementary planning guidance’ to Ryedale District Council. In other words, it formally makes the planners aware of the village community’s wishes which should be taken into account, along with their own and statutory criteria, when making their own plans, giving advice and, for instance, making decisions on planning applications.

However, whilst this document retains the basic ‘three questions’ objective, in order to achieve the purpose of a Village Design Statement (VDS), its emphasis shifted somewhat towards the purpose of the third question, ‘Where are we going?’.

The contents of the current document, which was formally adopted by Ryedale District Council in September 2013 and is published on the village website, are largely the fruits of the working of those groups.