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York hasn't known such a fight since local earls faced Norman invaders in the 11th century. This time around, they've been replaced by the local council, which is doing battle with a home-grown institution hoping to increase our understanding of sustainable living.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has been a powerhouse of progressive thinking and social research for more than a century. It has also played an important role in the life of York, its spiritual home, since the first Joseph Rowntree began investing the profits from his chocolate business into good works.

At the start of the last century, the trust began creating the model village of New Earswick to provide low-cost housing for the city's poor on 150 acres of land to the north of the city. The foundation now wants to create a "son of New Earswick" on the outskirts of the city, but its plans have been controversial since they were proposed seven years ago. This week, the foundation has found itself in the unlikely company of volume housebuilder Persimmon Homes (see box below) at a public inquiry following a government call in for the two developers' very different housing schemes. How has the squeaky clean foundation's model scheme become embroiled in one of the UK's longest running planning rows?

Illustration by Ed McLachlan

The proposal

It wasn't meant to be like this. The trust went out of its way, together with its masterplanners PRP Architects, to show that it is possible to develop in a way that meets both environmental and social objectives, turning sustainable community hype into bricks and mortar reality.

Rowntree proposed 540 homes on the 21.5 ha site that would be built at a density of 38.5 dwellings per hectare. The foundation has promised York council that 35% of the development will be affordable housing, rising to 40% if the scheme proves to be profitable. It says that the 65 dwellings that it is developing at Derwenthorpe will be built to the most exacting eco-standards, setting a standard for the three-quarters of the site that will be developed by private housebuilders. The scheme also ticks a sustainability box by filling in a gap in York's urban fabric - the proposed development is surrounded on three sides by housing. The Sustrans cycle track that bisects the site will be retained and the foundation has promised to encourage vehicle sharing by setting up a car club. It will also provide ongoing management of the site, as it has always done at New Earswick, once the development is finished.

The trust's development director, Nigel Ingram, says he does not want Derwenthorpe to be an environmental one-off, like the avant garde BedZed scheme developed in west London by the Peabody Trust, but somewhere that the likes of Persimmon will want to ape. "We don't have to have grass roofs. We want the homes to fit in with their environment so they don't appear challenging in terms of their design." He says the challenge the foundation wants to crack is to create suburban family housing that is also environmentally sustainable.

Can you imagine Hastings giving planning permission for a housing estate on Senlac Hill?鈥�

Verna Campbell, Fulford parish council

Rowntree's plans have principally been bedevilled by the lack of clarity over the York greenbelt, which has left plenty of room for dispute. Ever since it became a unitary authority in the early 1990s, lack of political will has led to York council being unable to agree a development plan. After York published its fourth draft plan in 2002, the government told the authority to go back to the drawing board and start preparing a local development framework. The upshot is that the greenbelt surrounding the city has never been put on a statutory footing. Derwenthorpe is not in the greenbelt, but because of the indecision, its fate has become wrapped up with sites which are, like Persimmon's.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England's local branch chairman Guy Woolley argues York's brownfield sites are big enough to accommodate the city's housing needs until at least 2015, but these sites will not come forward if green field land is released. The former marshalling yards and engineering works that make up the York Central site next to the railway station can accommodate 3300 dwellings alone, although progress on that Yorkshire Forward-backed scheme is painfully slow.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation鈥檚 planned development in Derwenthorpe

Local concerns

The historic village of Osbaldwick forms the nerve centre of resistance to the foundation's plans. The parish council's vice-chairman, William Kettlestring, says village residents are concerned that the development will increase the risk of flooding in an area that was inundated as recently as 2001. He is also suspicious that the council's interest in the development is motivated by the cash that it stands to make from selling the site to the foundation.

Kettlestring insists that local people are not totally opposed to the principle of development on the site, but to the scale of what the foundation is proposing. Earlier plans put forward by the council for 350 homes on the site were acceptable, he says.

"What they are doing is filling the whole lot with housing," he says.

Ingram insists that the foundation has bent over backwards to accommodate residents' concerns, leaving part of the site previously earmarked for a playing field as a water meadow, for example. "If you look at the process we have undertaken since 1999 compared to what the local planning authority would expect us to do under the recent planning act, we would stand up to the test," he says.

Research and the democratic process have been a stronger driver than delivering housing supply

Nigel Ingram, JRT

The trust used a variety of different consultation methods, including Planning for Real exercises and establishing a partnership committee that gave neighbouring residents a say in shaping the new development.

Ingram understands why residents are objecting. "If you look at the objectors, most of them have dogs and they walk them on the site; it's going to affect their way of life." But he believes that the foundation has been too accommodating. "It's very important for us to take the local people with us, but doing the research and doing the democratic process have been a stronger driver than delivering housing supply," he says.

"It's the right way for the JRF; whether it helps to get the housing supply moving is another question. If you give people hope that they can stop something, you can embolden them. There needs to be a balance between consultation and coming up with a decision, but it's very difficult to engage with people who don't want the development in the first place.

Illustration by Ed McLachlan

"For decades people living in the area have known that there was an intention to develop here. With that knowledge we should possibly have been a little more clear about the terms of reference by saying that there's going to be a housing development. If I'm interested in making an omelette, I'm going to have to crack some eggs." Derwenthorpe's national importance as a model for the growth area sustainable communities trumps local concerns, he argues.

But the JRF's "softly softly" approach is winning support, according to Chas Jones, the amateur archaeologist who has led the campaign to preserve the 11th century battlefield site at nearby Fulford which is also subject to a development proposal, from top housebuilder Persimmon. Praising the foundation's approach as a model of how to deal with communities, he says a number of objectors to the Derwenthorpe scheme have recently dropped out.

And if green field development is going to happen on the outskirts of York, the CPRE's Woolley expresses a preference for the foundation's plan over most residential development. "We are not keen on it, but if you are going to have development, it is better," he says, pointing to the way that the foundation is proposing to keep many of the site's mature trees and hedges.

Together with heavyweight backing from the Housing Corporation, hopes are mounting at the foundation that the inquiry will find in its favour. But, in the light of recent figures showing that North Yorkshire is one of the hardest places in the country to get on the housing ladder, has the wait been worth it?