Reinventing the high street: our fight to protect Malton They also have much to protect. Malton, in the old North Riding of Yorkshire, although of Roman origin, is a gem of Georgian and Victorian architecture honeycombed with Dickensian passages and the lovely river Derwent running through it. As regular readers of the Telegraph may recall, I have written about Malton, a place I've known and loved all my life, twice before. First, back in 2011, when the town centre was under threat from plans by Ryedale District Council, in league with the developer G M I Holbeck, to build a massive edge-of-town supermarket, which would have driven local shopkeepers out of business. My article acted as a rallying call not just to locals but for much of the rest of the country. Messages of support came from far afield, calling to keep our high streets as places where markets thrive and independent shops offer personal service and friendly faces; a call taken up by the Telegraph's Reinventing the High Street campaign. In 2012, I updated readers on our triumph. Thanks to the actions of Malton's residents and, I think, the power of the Telegraph's reach, local landowners the Naylor-Leyland family, who run the Fitzwilliam Malton Estate which owns and manages property in the town, hired, at a cost of £200,000, a legal team to examine the council's decision. It became evident that the council had gone against governmental planning procedure and it was ordered to pay nearly £150,000 in costs to the Estate. As a result, a smaller heritage development in scale with the townscape and backed by the townspeople, was given approval. Malton, it appeared, had turned a corner. This why I came to put my name above the door of a former watch repairers" in The Shambles. The small space had just been restored and from this modest emporium I am now selling socks made from the fleeces of angora goats, a business that I started 12 years ago after rescuing six of these adorable creatures. I'd wanted to find a use for the mountain of silky hair generated from the bi-annual shearings and went into the sock business online ten years ago. Frankly, it is much easier to sell my socks via the web, but that doesn't send the same message. I felt it was important to demonstrate that Malton was on a genuine path to regeneration. After the council's plans for a superstore had been defeated, there was a real sense of celebration in Malton. The annual Food Lovers Festival attracted 25,000 people, including chef Antonio Carluccio and food critic Jay Rayner, confirming its potential as the new food capital of Yorkshire. The Fitzwilliam Malton Estate fast-tracked an £8 million restoration programme, transforming the old butter market building overlooking the market square, and brought to life the Talbot Hotel by hiring James Martin, a friend of Jamie Oliver who was born in Malton, as chef. The Talbot is where the 31-year-old heir to the Estate, Tom Naylor-Leyland, can occasionally be heard playing the jazz piano taught him by his godfather, Jools Holland. Towards the end of 2012, buoyed by this euphoria, Malton banded together to raise £32,000 to buy at auction a rare edition of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. It has a handwritten inscription from the author to the widow of his best friend, Charles Smithson, a lawyer whose office in Malton's Chancery Lane was the inspiration for Scrooge's Counting House. That copy of A Christmas Carol came home to Malton in time for that Christmas, an event which I wrote about for this paper. It was yet another milestone in renewing optimism. Unfortunately, this was short-lived. Recently, we have learned, in a development we regard as a betrayal, that G M I Holbeck is again seeking planning permission for a superstore. Ryedale District Council which has drawn up a Local Plan - a proposed development plan - in which the disputed site (which it does own, but which was originally given to Malton by the Estate for use as a car park) has been re-zoned for retail use. This plan will, the council hopes, enable it to forestall legal objections - and benefit financially from G M I Holbeck when the developer gets planning permission from the council. A spokesperson for the council said: "Extensive consultation has been undertaken with Ryedale residents and businesses to produce the Ryedale Local Plan - a planning blueprint for the whole of Ryedale including key market towns such as Malton.A special meeting of the Ryedale District Council Planning Committee will be held early in 2014 to consider this matter." Yet this is the same council which brushed aside the Local Plan for nearby Kirkbymoorside, a medieval market town that hit the headlines a few months ago when, against overwhelming local opposition, it gave permission for a development of 200 new homes. In a scene you couldn't make up, the councillor elected to represent the people of Kirkbymoorside, David Cussons, "pressed the wrong button" in the electronic vote and instead of voting against the development, voted for it. As six out of the 10 members on the planning committee abstained, two were opposed and one pressed the wrong button, it was left to one person, the chairman, Councillor Raper, known to favour development and who voted for the supermarket in Malton, to inflict a massive housing project on a small town. Communities like ours must put on their armour and find what money they can to fight such goliaths. It isn't easy, especially when the Secretary of State for Communities, Eric Pickles, has not yet intervened, as he did when called on by Malton's townsfolk in 2011. The stakes couldn't be higher for Malton. If the superstore goes ahead, the heritage development planned by the Fitzwilliam Estate will be axed. None of the local stores has the resources to take on a monolith. With no anchor for the town's future as a foodie destination, Malton and its heritage have suddenly become precarious. In the meantime, my little shop, if not open all hours, will remain defiantly open to all comers. Tom Naylor-Leyland marched in the other day and bought socks for his entire family. Thankfully not everyone believes, as my heroic Yorkshire farmer does, that one pair of socks will last two years of daily wear. READ: Deal wins high street award