There had been a total of nine unsuccessful applications on the site with the latest being dismissed on appeal last year. Whilst those applications had mainly been for larger scale development a key issue was that the site was considered to be on the wrong side of the road with the council and planning inspectors considering the built area of the village to be on the north side of the road. As you can see from the photograph below the site was very rural in appearance.
When RCC were approached we considered all options for the site and decided that, with the change in the circumstances with a proposal being built out nearby on this side of the road, there was an argument to support a more modest proposal and one that met local housing need.
We were however aware that a lot of money had been spent pursing applications on this site and as such we proposed the use of a fairly new option of a Planning in Principle (PiP) application. This allowed us to present an application with a robust planning statement supporting the principle of the development without having to produce detailed and expensive consultants reports relating to; highways, ecology, drainage, tree surveys etc. If the PiP was allowed these other reports would be presented at the Technical Stage which, like a reserved matters application, has to be within 3 years of the PiP approval.
The planning officer accepted the case put forward by RCC and recommended the application for approval. However, due to objections the application had to be decided at the planning committee. The outcome was a vote of 7 to 1 in favour of approving the application.
