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25/01/2022
723,552 Planning applications Submitted Online 2021
The Planning Portal
received 723,552 applications from England and Wales during 2021 – 17 per cent
more than the 617,867 submitted in 2021.
In 2020 there was a
surge in submissions, driven by home improvement applications, according to
Planning Portal's January Planning Market Insight Report.
This continued into
2021. From May, however, there was a “gradual slow back to a more standard
pattern of applications”, which continued for the remainder of the year.
The final quarter of
2021 saw a volume of submissions 6 per cent less than the same quarter a year
earlier. This is a reflection of Q4 2020 seeing “extraordinarily high” numbers
rather than a “cause for concern”.
In December 2021,
49,587 applications were submitted in England and Wales, compared with the
53,430 submitted in December 2020.
Wales was the only
area to report an increase in submissions in December 2021 compared with the
same month a year earlier, up 1 per cent with 1,820.
From December 2020 to
December 2021, Yorkshire and the Humber saw the biggest fall, down 11 per cent.
For the year, the
report shows that of the nine English regions and Wales, seven saw increases
between 16 per cent and 19 per cent, against the overall increase of 17 per
cent. London saw the smallest year-on-year increase, with a 13 per cent rise in
2021 compared with 2020.
The North East
submitted the fewest applications but its volume grew the most – up 22 per cent
from 2020 to 2021.
The report notes that
although an increase in work brings its rewards, "you can only manage so
much with limited resources". Service demand can’t be predicted and this
uncertainty makes resource planning “difficult” and there is not the qualified
professional resource available to plug the gap.
Planning Portal
states: “We are hearing first-hand that the initial positive collaboration and
drawing together of the different parties involved in planning is now waning
and is being replaced with frustration and annoyance at delays in the
validation and determination process.”
The report also says
that December 2021 saw the highest amount of fees paid, totalling nearly £32
million. This was £2.1 million higher than in March 2021, which is the
second-highest fee-paying month. The December 2021 amount is 2 per cent down on
December 2020.
Ammanford Wind Farm: How to build a turbine.
14/02/2017
Main Provisions of Housing White Paper 'Fixing our Broken Housing Market'
Funding
• £3 billion Home Building Fund to be used to help SME
builders challenge major developers. • The previously announced “lifetime ISA”
is designed to help first-time buyers save for a deposit. • Ensuring
infrastructure is provided in the right places at the right times through the
£2.3 billion Housing Infrastructure Fund.
Land and Planning
• Require reviews of Development Plans every 5 years • Look
to introducing a standardised method for the assessment of housing needs • Give
greater weight and support to permitting small site developments • Time
permitted between granting of planning permission and start of building reduced
from change to: three to two year except where this could hinder viability. •
Developers to be expected to avoid “low-density” housing where land
availability is low. • Greater transparency over land ownership and
availability to discourage ‘land banking’. • Higher fees and new capacity
funding to develop planning departments. • No reform of the Green Belt –
development will continue to be permitted only in “exceptional circumstances”.
Modern Methods of Construction (MMC)
• Pledge to stimulate the growth of offsite construction
through the Accelerated Construction Programme and the Home Builders Fund. •
Support a joint working group with lenders, valuers and the industry to
increase availability of mortgages across modern methods of construction,
building on the Build Offsite Property Assurance Scheme. • Consideration of how
the operation of the planning system is working for MMC developments.
Skills
• New route into construction to be launched in September
2019, streamlining the number of existing courses. • The Government has pledged
to change the way it supports training in the construction industry. • Pledge
to work closely with the Construction Leadership Council to encourage industry
to do more on retention and training.
Public Sector
• Councils to be forced to produce up-to-date plans for
housing demand, intervening if necessary. • Reviewing Compulsory Purchase
powers for Local Authorities. • Extra help for Local Authorities to hold
developers to account if they fail to deliver. • Implementing a new housing
delivery test to hold local authorities to account. • Consultation on granting
Local Authorities flexibility to dispose of land at less than best
consideration
Rented Sector
• Government will target investment for Build to Rent. •
Shift of emphasis from home ownership (particularly Starter Homes) to “a
broader range of affordable housing”. • Consultation on the banning of letting
agent fees to be released early this year. • Relaxation of Affordable Homes
Programme to include affordable rent as a component tenure, rather than
focusing on shared ownership as the scheme did originally.
25/11/2016
Holding direction lifted on Birmingham City Plan
The
government has lifted its holding direction on Birmingham City Council’s
Development Plan, allowing the authority to deliver thousands of homes and
jobs.
Planning
and housing minister Gavin Barwell lifted the direction, the first to be made
under section 145(5) of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which prevented the
plan from progressing pending further investigation into proposals to earmark
land in the Sutton Coldfield green belt for housing and jobs. It was initially approved in April 2016.
The
RTPI Planner magazine reported in May that a holding notice had been issued on
Birmingham’s development plan following a complaint by local bicycling MP
Andrew Mitchell.
Barwell
said the scale of unmet housing demand in Birmingham was “exceptional and possibly
unique”, and saw no reason to disagree with a planning inspector’s view that
the plan was consistent with national planning policy.
The
plan aims to build 51,000 homes, including up to 6,000 at Langley in Sutton
Coldfield. The council had promised the new homes will be supported by exemplar
infrastructure and facilities plus the “highest standards of design and
sustainability” as well as being integrated with the existing community. The
plan is expected to be formally adopted early next year.
Birmingham
had concluded that 89,000 homes are needed in the next 15 years to tackled the
city’s acute housing shortage and growing population. All brownfield land in
Birmingham with potential for housing development had been considered under the
council’s strategic housing land availability assessment.
Birmingham’s
strategic director of economy, Waheed Nazir, welcomed the government’s move.
“Removing
the holding direction is an important decision both for the city and the wider
UK in terms of our ability to deliver housing growth,” he added. In October, the government issued a similar
direction against Bradford Metropolitan District Council on the adoption of its
core strategy amid concerns from Shipley MP Philip Davies over the proposed
release of green belt in the Wharfedale area.
20/09/2016
Policy to Boost Self-Built Homes
Teignbridge Council has established a blueprint
requiring developers to provide self-build housing
This
year’s Housing and Planning Act introduced new duties for councils to plan for
self and custom-build homes. One local
authority in Devon has already been taking a pioneering approach to encouraging
this model of housing through local policy.
This
summer, Teignbridge District Council said it had become the first in the
country to adopt a supplementary planning document (SPD) promoting self and
custom build homes. The document,
adopted in July, sets out how the authority intends to secure provision of such
homes through conventional housing schemes.
The SPD is based on a local plan policy that the council adopted two years ago.
This requires developers of schemes of more than 20 homes to supply at least
five per cent of plots for sale to self and custom builders. "We are trying to help small house
builders and self-builders to maintain or increase their proportion of the
market, which will benefit the local supply chain and increase the variety of
approaches and designs," says Simon Thornley, the council’s business
manager of spatial planning and delivery. While preparing the local plan,
the council gathered evidence for the policy to test the market for
self-build housing.
The results convinced the authority that there was sufficient demand for the
product. "The figures looked really strong and suggested that there was a
pool of people out there who would be interested," says Thornley. The council was encouraged by paragraph 50 of
the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which advocates incorporating
self-build homes into the housing mix.
The resulting "Teignbridge rule" – the five per cent requirement –
was drafted as a local plan policy and met with minimal objection, Thornley
recalls. "Developers didn’t seem too concerned," he says. "For
them it means selling plots rather than houses, so it’s not about viability so
much as certainty." But with the local plan adopted, the council decided
that such a new area of policy required further detailed guidance to
assist developers, development management officers and custom and
self-builders. It quickly produced an
SPD to "give a bit of a route map for the various actors in the
process", says Thornley.
Teignbridge’s work in developing the policy and the SPD has been supported by
the Homes and Communities Agency and the National Custom and Self-build
Association (NaCSBA). Thornley says that
the association’s advice and online toolkit have taught the authority some key
lessons and the association has welcomed the publication of the SPD. "When
it comes to encouraging, supporting and growing the opportunities for people to
build their own homes, Teignbridge has been one of the most proactive councils
in the country," says NaCSBA chair Ted Stevens.
"This document will make it easier for local people to self-build and I’m
sure many other councils in the UK will find it helpful, too." With the
local plan policy having been in place for two years, sites that have been
through the system are only now starting to be delivered. The first site
incorporating self-build and custom plots – a 205-home scheme in Bovey Tracey
containing 20 self-build plots – is expected to be marketed in the coming
weeks, says Thornley.
"We have 11 sites permitted that incorporate the self-build requirement,
and the total number of plots coming forward from those is 102," he adds.
Thornley says that the most difficult aspect of the project has been the long
wait to see the fruits of the Teignbridge rule. "It’s going to be great
when we start to see these developments coming out of the ground," he
says.
Key lessons;
· Remember that promoting self-build can
help to deliver both market and affordable housing. According to Teignbridge Council
senior planner Alex Lessware, the supplementary planning document (SPD) “seeks
to address the demand for both affordable and market self-build through the
five per cent allocations policy and on rural exception sites”.
· Think about how the self-build element
of developments can be brought forward in a reasonable timescale. Teignbridge
has found that some developers prefer to leave custom and self-build elements
to the end of their builds. The SPD addresses this by giving advice on phasing
and providing template section 106 clauses.
· Local planning authorities should
consider ways in which they can raise the profile of their self-build policies. “Clarifying
our local plan policies through the creation of an SPD helped to improve
comprehension and raise the profile of our policies among our own councillors
and staff, as well as the wider public,” says Lessware.
Project: Teignbridge
Supplementary Planning Document on Custom and Self-Build Housing
Organisations involved: Teignbridge District
Council, with support from the Homes and Communities Agency and the National
Custom and Self-build Association.
15/04/2016
Garden Villages - Policy Think Tank Advice to the Treasury
These
announcements, buried deep in the Budget detail, could radically change the way
we deliver new homes.
Because
rural councils will soon be able to acquire land for these "garden
villages" at an affordable price, the development bodies they create will
be able to afford to invest upfront in the schools, shops, GPs’ surgeries,
workplaces, parks and sports fields to create sustainable communities. This
will all be achievable at no expense to taxpayers, as the cost will be repaid
by plot sales.
Landowners
won’t get a windfall in the form of an unearned multi-million-pound payoff, but
they will get decent compensation - more than enough to buy a much better farm or
home somewhere else.
Keeping
the cost of land moderate will make the homes built on it affordable too – and
not just some of them. With plots readily available to all comers, prices will
be driven down through competition, rather than up through shortage of supply.
All
this is great news for people who desperately want a decent home in a
well-served, attractive community. There will be plenty of choice, as low-cost
plots can be made available for self-builders and those wanting to commission a
home from a local builder, as well as to housing associations, small and
medium-sized businesses, and new entrants to the UK housing market - including
overseas builders used to mass-producing at scale - who will now be able to
access plots without planning risk.
Most
importantly, the change offers a new option for councils struggling to deliver
the homes their communities need in the face of understandable concerns from
existing residents about the impacts of new development - not just visually,
but in terms of local services, traffic congestion, and affordability.
Meeting
the deadlines for local plans will also become easier, as housing need can be
more readily met with a single new settlement using New Towns Act powers, with
delivery guaranteed through the development body. This makes for a simpler
process, without the need to negotiate the difficult politics of multiple
smaller urban extensions (or even a larger one) involving complex land
holdings, viability issues and questionable delivery.
This
opens the path to the US and European model, in which homes are often built to
order within well-planned settlements, and where the necessary social (and
other) infrastructure is delivered by a "master builder" and funded
by plot sales.
As
the development under this model can’t be controlled by one or two large
housebuilders, no one can control house prices by drip-feeding homes to a
desperate market – nor will they have to do so to meet high land prices.
House-builders
will, however, have to compete on quality and price. The development body,
engaging commercial expertise, will act for the community as a whole to deliver
a great place. It will enforce the masterplan and design codes, and deliver all
the services, selling plots at affordable prices.
I
believe this will be especially good news for historic market towns and
villages besieged by speculative development proposals. Councils that opt to
deliver a new garden village to meet local needs will be able to rule out
unwanted development on the edge of historic settlements, protecting the places
people care about most - those in their own back yard.
It is
also about creating sustainable communities fit for the 21st century. With
low-cost land, it is far easier to deliver the premises for local entrepreneurs
that are typical of older settlements. Shop units, offices and small business
premises become part of the infrastructure investment, turning presumptions
about what is "viable" on their heads.
This
way, we can create communities that are far more self-contained than any recent
urban extension.
I
would struggle to find a large housing estate that has anything like the range
of facilities and businesses found in my village of 1400 homes. Why? Because,
in my village, premises are not capital investments competing for land with new
homes, expected to make a sizable return for landowner, developer and national
retailer. As a result, they are readily available at low cost.
Of
course, people will travel to larger service centres for fashion retail and
other ‘big trip’ items. But think for a moment – what does 21st century
sustainability look like? In an age were electric vehicles are around the
corner, the trip to town down the main road will no longer be unsustainable.
What
is unsustainable is the traffic congestion currently found in historic towns as
people travel by car (let’s face it, they don’t walk) from an edge-of-town
estate to established schools, shops and workplaces in the town centre.
This
congestion is not ‘solvable’ if we go on extending the edge of town. By
contrast, those travelling into major centres from a new settlement can be
picked up at a park and ride, and/or given rapid transport options such as
executive coaches and bus links. Alternatively, they can be persuaded to use
home delivery services instead of making the trip at all.
Today
the default option for new homes is endless ‘anywhere town’ estates crammed
onto the green fields around historic communities, built there in the name of
‘sustainability’, but in fact adding to congestion.
These
are the green fields people value precisely because they are on their
doorsteps, and are the setting of their historic communities. They are the
fields that absorb flood water and provide access to the countryside.
This
is also the land that is most costly, controlled by "land options"
guaranteeing the highest possible prices with few, if any, services. As a
result, people who move into the new homes have to drive across town for
everything, leading to ever-more congested roads, overcrowded schools and
surgeries, all at the cost of the historic settings of every market town and
village.
No
wonder new development is so unpopular.
Residents
don’t get the homes they want, either. People are able to well describe their
hopes for a home - typically, they look for a decent and affordable house and
garden, in a strong neighbourhood, with local facilities and a good school.
Yet
we almost always fail to deliver this, because the price of land is too high.
In a society where only two per cent of the population aspire to live in a
flat, around 40 per cent of what we build are flats.
In a
country where, even in the ‘overcrowded’ South East, 87 per cent of the land is
green fields, and where meeting housing needs would use less than one per cent
of that space, we act as though we are so short of land that an Englishman’s
home can no longer include a decent garden - or any at all. What are we
thinking of?
A new
generation of smaller garden towns and villages - and the extension of the
power to use the New Towns Act (suitably modernised) to local planning
authorities to achieve them - does not rule out more conventional development
options. But I believe it adds a fundamentally game-changing option to the mix.
In
time, it will alter perceptions of what land is worth on the urban fringe, as
landowners on the edge of town will have to compete for development, no longer
able to assume it will come to them sooner or later, and to command prices that
reflect under-supply and a lack of alternatives.
This
isn’t about more green fields being developed – it is about which green fields,
and who gets the financial benefit of development.
It’s
not about building new housing estates - it’s about creating sustainable
holistic new communities.
Crucially,
it’s about listening to what people actually want.
If
each of England's rural local authorities builds just one or two new garden
villages during the next decade, they can deliver the extra homes desperately
needed in their communities in great, well-served new settlements, at prices
people can afford.
And
all without ruining the historic places we treasure.
19/01/2016
Councils demand the power to tax
developers who sit on land and block housebuilding
The Local Government Association says councils should have the
power to charge big companies that sit on sites with planning permission.
Councils should be given the power to
tax developers for every unbuilt house in
a bid to unlock 475,000 units which are yet to be started, the Local Government
Association has said. Full council tax
should apply to companies sitting on development sites where new homes have
been given the green light from the date planning permission expires, the body
said.
The tax would act as a punishment to
developers who land-bank, preventing homes from being built despite being given
the go-ahead by councils. Almost half a million homes have been
granted permission but have not been started, the LGA has found.
The research also revealed that
developers are taking a year longer on average to complete work compared to
nine years ago, while planning applications given permission have also gone up
compared to 2007/8.
Councillor Peter Box, the LGA Housing
spokesman, said: "While private developers have a key role in solving our
chronic housing shortage, they cannot build the 230,000 needed each year on
their own. To tackle the new homes backlog and to get Britain building again,
councils must have the power to invest in building new homes and to force
developers to build homes more quickly.
“New homes are badly-needed and councils want
to get on with the job of building them. If we are to see a genuine end to our
housing crisis we have to be given the powers to get on with it.”
Planning permission expires after
three years and the LGA has called on Ministers to allow councils to start
charging council tax on proposed properties as soon as it runs out.
A spokesman for the Department for
Communities and Local Government said: "The government is determined to
see more homes built, we do not want to increase costs and bureaucracy that
slow the rate of housing delivery or planning permissions being brought
forward.
“We do want to see improvements in
build out rates and we have seen the number of new homes increase by 25 per
cent in the last year alone and are working with the sector to achieve even
faster build out.”
13/12/2015
Chinese Planning
Not Best Practice
A study commissioned by the Royal Town Planning
Institute (RTPI) said town planning could be used to drive the UK economy – but
was currently seen as a brake rather than an accelerator.
Planning China’s Future, based on research by three
members of staff from University College London (UCL), found that
municipalities in the Asian powerhouse used strategic planning to attract the
developments they wanted.
The study said that while China’s system was not to
be seen as best practice for other countries, it did show how planning could
support growth.
"The focus of planning should be shifted from
physical design to economic development in order to cope with the demands of
the market," said the report.
"In the Chinese context, planning has undergone this transformation and
succeeded in adapting to the marketisation of the Chinese economy. Chinese
planning in this case has managed to become more important and central to the
governance system."
The report also said that studying the Chinese
system also illustrates "how extreme liberalisation of the planning system
should be avoided, as this would weaken the ability of planners to shape the
development market".
The report was based on research conducted for the RTPI by Fulong Wu, Fangzhu
Zhang and Zheng Wang from the Bartlett School of Planning at UCL.
RTPI head of research Mike Harris said: "As
the UK develops its strategic relationship with China on major projects and
investments such as the National Infrastructure Plan and the Northern
Powerhouse, these findings can be useful to provide a more positive
interpretation of planning and help counter the perception that planning is a passive
obstacle to economic growth."
06/11/2015
The New Housing Bill and Express Consents
Tens of thousands of new homes in greenfield areas
in England will be given automatic planning permission amid fears that
communities will have inappropriate developments forced on them. Ministers have quietly given developers the
right to be granted "planning in principle" in areas that are
earmarked for new housing schemes.
Rural campaigners said the new powers will restrict
the rights of council planning officers to ensure that the design, density,
size and location of homes is in keeping with local areas. Shaun Spiers, chief
executive of the Campaign to protect Rural England, said: “The country needs
more house building, but the way to achieve this is through well-planned
developments that win public consent. Imposing development without local
democratic oversight is a recipe for discord.”
“Poor quality, unplanned development may boost the
profits of the big builders, but it will do very little to address the housing
crisis.”
Ministers have quietly expanded the scope of this
"planning in principle" power in recent weeks from brownfield sites
to areas earmarked for development in local plans.
Just three weeks ago David Cameron, the Prime Minister,
said that the new "planning in principle" changes would apply to
brownfield sites like former car parks and industrial areas.
However Government documents said the new power
will apply to "housing identified in local plans and neighbourhood
plans" which include greenfield areas.
They said that ‘planning in principle’ will give
“upfront certainty” for developers on the location, use and size of the new
development.
Councils will be able to vet unspecified
"technical" details on developments, but will be denied the outright
ability to block housing schemes they consider inappropriate.
One document states: “The Government proposes to
legislate to enable the Secretary of State to grant ‘permission in principle’
via a development order to land that is allocated for development in locally
produced plans and registers.”
Whitehall forecasts say the new plans could be used
to give approvals to homes on 7,000 building sites a year.
Whitehall documents published alongside the Bill
say: “The total number of developments annually that could benefit from
permission in principle will grow as plans and registers come on stream and
make site allocations.”
Countryside campaigners attacked the reforms,
saying the Government was wrong not to try to see if they worked in a green
paper first and blaming developers for not building enough homes.
Mr Spiers said: "The Government seems obsessed
with the idea that the planning system is holding back house building. It is
not.
“The number of planning permissions has increased
massively, developers hold huge and growing land banks, yet fewer houses are
being built.
“Permission in principle for greenfield development
will not cause more houses to be built, but there is a serious risk that it
will result in poor quality, low density developments that will increase public
antagonism to house building.
"It also risks undermining the Government’s
excellent focus on brownfield development and neighbourhood planning."
John Healey, the shadow Housing minister, said:
“The Government is badly failing to hit its housebuilding targets, and the
sweeping new powers in this Bill should ring alarm bells about Ministers
getting ready to override local communities and give developers a free hand.”
Brandon Lewis, the Housing Minister, said: “Our
planning reforms have put an end to the top-down system of the past that pitted
neighbours against developers, and instead put power back in the hands of local
people.”
“The Housing Bill means permission would be granted
in principle where land has been identified for housebuilding in local and
neighbourhood plans and on brownfield land – but developers will still need to
submit details of what they plan to build and how it will look for approval
before they can put spades in the ground.”
“And with over 80 per cent of councils having
published a local plan, and over 100 communities having developed neighbourhood
plans, it means millions of people will have a direct say over how their area
is developed.”
10/10/2015
A hundred communities in England
have adopted Neighbourhood Plans.
Locality, the national network of
community-led organisations, which delivers the planning programme on behalf of
the Department for Communities and Local Government, says more than eight
million people in 1,600 neighbourhoods now live in areas with Neighbourhood
Plans. These documents, written by communities, set out the planning policies
for an area.
Once adopted in a referendum, a
Neighbourhood Plan becomes part of statutory planning policy and all planning
decisions must be guided by it.
Locality has allocated £6.7m in
government grants to support community groups through the process since its
introduction under the Localism Act in 2011.
Chief executive Tony Armstrong said
people want to influence what happens on their doorstep. “Whether that’s
ensuring there’s enough affordable housing for their children in the future,
protecting green spaces or safeguarding their neighbourhood’s heritage, they
get to say what’s important to them and, more importantly, they get to be
listened to,” he said.
Campaign for London’s
Mayor – Goldsmith versus Khan
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2015/oct/02/london-mayoral-race-zac-goldsmith-v-sadiq-khan
Reports are that Zac
Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston, has been named as the
Conservative candidate for London mayor today.
The Guardian reports that Goldsmith’s selection sets up a "fascinating
personal and political fight with the Labour candidate Sadiq Khan." The
newspaper quotes Goldsmith saying that the "biggest challenge of all is
the housing crisis. Londoners are being priced out of their city and we will
need a step change in the number of homes built, and the manner in which they
are built."
09/09/2015
Despite a record year for turnover major house-builder still sees LPA's at root of housing shortage.
Despite Redrow Homes posting private revenues inexcess of £1bn for the first time ever they continue to bemoan local planning
authorities for site delays, warning that the delivery of new homes is being
held up by 'local politics, a lack of resources and unnecessary bureaucracy'. The housebuilder’s operation
review praised the former coalition government for doing "a lot to improve
the planning system". It adds that the new Conservative administration’s
recently published productivity plan "sets out a clear intention and
determination to build more homes that people can afford".
But the group’s operating review warned: "Ultimately delivery is very much
in the hands of local authorities where all too often planning is stifled by
local politics, a lack of resources and unnecessary bureaucracy."
"To materially increase output, these fundamental issues have to be
addressed," the document continued. It said that Redrow tries hard to
"overcome these planning obstacles by consulting with local communities and
working closely with planning departments".
Redrow chairman Steve Morgan said that the local plan process has
"noticeably improved" since the introduction of the National Planning
Policy Framework, but added: "Local plans are still taking far too long in
many parts of the country."
The statement added: "Last year there was a noticeable increase in the
number of outline planning approvals. However, gaining reserved matters and
detailed planning consents is still taking far too long.
"Increasing housing supply in the UK is dependent on increasing the number
of outlets; yet, despite the increase in headline planning consents, the number
of outlets in the industry has barely grown. This situation will not improve
until the burden of red tape associated with needless planning reports and
conditions has been removed."
09/05/2015
DCLG back down and don’t support
Rolleston Neighbourhood Plan efforts.
Communities
secretary Eric Pickles decided not to contest a High Court challenge against
his decision to reject plans for 100 Staffordshire homes on the basis that the
proposals would 'undermine' an emerging neighbourhood plan.
Last year Eric Pickles rejected an
inspector’s recommendation to allow an appeal against East Staffordshire
Borough Council’s refusal of planning permission for the homes proposed for a
college site at Rolleston on Dove.
Pickles agreed back then with inspector Terry Phillmore that there was a
"substantial shortfall" in the council’s five-year housing land
supply.
But Pickles found that "the effect of granting permission would undermine
the neighbourhood plan-making process in this case", as the site, owned by
Burton and South Derbyshire College, was not proposed as a housing location in
an emerging neighbourhood plan. A
decision letter said that Pickles gave "significant weight to the
opportunity which the neighbourhood plan process gives to local people to
ensure they get the right types of development for their community".
Burton and South Derbyshire College brought a legal challenge against the
secretary of state’s refusal to grant planning permission.
The case was listed for a High Court hearing in July but this week it emerged
that Pickles has now "consented to judgement" in the legal challenge
against his decision, meaning that the appeal will now be remitted back to the
secretary of state for redetermination.
Law firm SGH Martineau, which advised the college, said that Pickles’ decision
to consent to judgement was the "first time that the secretary of state
has backtracked on neighbourhood plans".
Law firm SGH Martineau added: "This neighbourhood plan did not conform to
the council’s local plan, which had allocated the land for development,
recognising the benefit the scheme offers in terms of new homes and the
potential for economic growth."
The barrister, who represented the college at the appeal and in the High Court
proceedings, commented: "The case demonstrates that in his enthusiasm for
neighbourhood planning, the secretary of state failed to take into account even
the fact the site is allocated in the emerging local plan."
The Department for Communities and Local Government spokesman said:
"Having reviewed representations, Ministers decided in March to
re-determine the appeal at College Playing Fields in Rolleston on Dove. The
appeal will now be carefully re-considered."
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Lufton & Associates
Chartered Planning Consultancy
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Bailey Street Stafford ST17 4BG
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cpc@chartered
planning
consultancy.co.uk
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