Viking Centre Carpark - An explanation

The recent erection of security barriers at the Viking Centre Car Park in Driffield has for some people been inconvenient and for others it has been catastrophic.

 

E.R.Y.C. Cllrs Fraser, Temple and Owen hope the following explanation of the situation may be helpful.

 

Firstly, to prevent any confusion, the car park is on private land. When the Viking Centre was developed the landowner entered into a legal agreement with the then Council to say that although the park was private it would be freely available for use as parking space to the public.

 

There is a subtle difference between a legal agreement and a planning condition, but more on this later.

 

If maintenance work required part of the park to be closed then the owner would have to seek permission to shut the park whilst works took place.

 

The landowners sought permission for the current closure, but they had not received the required permission before they proceeded to go ahead with the erection of fencing. The fence should not have been erected until permission had been granted and the area to be fenced agreed.

 

Had the right to use the parking been established as a planning condition the situation could have been resolved quite quickly by use of enforcement measures administered by the planning department. Unfortunately as the usage is established through a legal agreement, the process is much more protracted if the landowner chooses not to comply.

 

We may have some time to wait before this difficult situation is rectified If the landowner insists on leaving the fence up the only recourse the Council may have may be through litigation, that could be a lengthy and expensive process.

 

There may be legal pressures the leaseholders can apply through the use of their own solicitors based on the conditions of their leases but this is likely to be costly.

 

The best thing we can do as customers of the various affected businesses is to make sure that we try our very hardest to continue to trade with them whilst they remain caught up in this difficult situation. 

 

20th May 2002