A WATCHDOG claims there is deliberate flouting of the planning system over the sale of restricted occupancy homes.

Harrogate Civic Society believes properties given planning consent for sole use by people involved in agriculture or forestry should not be sold on the open market once losing their special status.

Instead, they should be put on the market as low cost housing for deserving local people.

The society's planning watchdog, Henry Pankhurst, writing in the latest civic society newsletter expresses growing concern about more homes being released from what are known as their "ag tags" - agricultural worker tags.

Securing an "ag tag" means a home can be built in a countryside location when other properties would be normally be rejected, sometimes in the green belt or special landscape areas.

Mr Pankhurst says it is quite rare for homes to be built which fulfil the special requirements. But the property, he says, should only be used by a worker and family carrying out specified work in the countryside.

Mr Pankhurst says he has come across several more examples recently where requests have been made to drop occupancy conditions.

"Every time an ag tag is taken off, we end up with an ordinary market house that would not be allowed now," he says.

Mr Pankhurst says there seems to be no monitoring of occupants. Some cases exist, he adds, where the home has never been occupied by agricultural workers.

He cites a recent case involving a home occupied by a retired man who had no intention of being involved in farming.

Another was occupied by a succession of tenants. Not one of them had any agricultural working links.

Mr Pankhurst is concerned there seems to have been no control over what he describes as "deliberate flouting" of the planning system.

He adds: "To the owners, the great advantage of losing the ag tag is that the property can be sold for a lot more money than an ordinary market value house."