A PETITION criticising planning policies which denied a local family a home is to be presented to the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority.

Hawes and High Abbotside Parish Council began collecting signatures when members were outraged at refusal by the park authority to allow a young family to convert a barn at Cams House into a home which they would rent in perpetuity.

The petition, to be presented to the authority later this month, calls for a review of policies which allow the building to be turned into a holiday cottage but not a permanent home for a local couple and their children.

The park authority is also urged to press the secretary of state to "call in" and decide on the application.

The planning committee twice approved the proposals for the barn, but Mervyn Wilmington, authority monitoring officer, called it back before members shortly before Christmas, when the original approval was overturned.

The couple who made the application, David Winspear and Sharon Spensley, and their children, two-year-old Luke and two-month-old twin girls, may have to leave the area because they can not afford the house prices.

Coun John Blackie, chairman of Hawes and High Abbotside Parish Council and a member of the national park authority, condemned the decision as "obscene" and urged people to sign the petition.

"We have had some bad decisions in our time but, in my view and in the view of other local representatives, this particular decision has caused even more outrage," he said.

Forty-five people had left Hawes and High Abbotside in the last four years, many of them because they could not afford housing costs. The exodus had a knock-on effect on businesses in the area.

A decision notice had not yet been issued and it was hoped that the secretary of state would eventually decide the issue, taking the matter out of the authority's hands, said Coun Blackie.

The petition will be presented to the authority at its meeting at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes on January 28, 10.30.

Copies of the petition are available at shops and businesses in Hawes, Bainbridge and Askrigg