Hundreds of Yorkshire Dales residents will be keeping their fingers crossed for the next few weeks to discover if their communities have escaped being swamped by massive housing developments ordered by the last government.

Yesterday (May 31) the new Communities Secretary Eric Pickles announced that he was scrapping directives from the Labour government which would have forced the building of massive housing developments on some 30 areas of green belt in England.

The Craven area of the Yorkshire Dales which lies outside the national park has been hard hit by new housing in the past decade as the district council followed orders from Whitehall to take its share of Gordon Brown’s plans to build more than a million homes on greenfield sites.

Villagers in the Aire Valley and along the popular A65 tourist route which links the Dales with the Lake District have been particularly hard hit, with many villages complaining that their communities have been swamped by newcomers.

Skipton has been the worst affected, with orders to build hundreds of new homes which have been vehemently opposed by local residents who say the town’s ancient character is being destroyed. Only last week, more than 100 locals crowded the town hall to protest against plans for a big new housing estate.

The western side of the Craven area has taken he bulk of the development because the eastern half lies in the Yorkshire Dales national park, where there has been virtually no large scale building.

The Labour plans have been scrapped by the new Communities Minister, Conservative Eric Pickles, who has already shown a tough edge by refusing to approve a new pay and pension deal for the boss of the Audit Commission, which is supposed to control local government spending, but is itself under attack for wasting millions of taxpayers’ money.