Cost revealed of opposing Berkshire film studios

Windsor and Maidenhead council spent some £240,000 fighting to stop a huge film studio being built in Holyport, a planning boss has revealed.

Housing and planning minister Matthew Pennycook MP upheld the council’s decision to refuse planning permission for the film studio in a decision earlier this month.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead’s (RBWM) deputy head of planning Louise Reid celebrated the decision but said the appeal had cost the council ‘about £240,000’.

Investment company Greystoke Land had appealed to the government to allow the film studio to be built in Holyport after RBWM councillors refused to grant planning permission.

The plans included sound stages, workshops, offices, footpaths, a multi-storey car park, a ‘backlot’ filming area, a new roundabout, and a ‘media village’ for post-production.

But RBWM councillors voted to refused to grant the studios planning permission in March 2024.

The councillors agreed with their planning officers who said the development would be inappropriate on the green belt.

Planning officers argued that there were no ‘very special circumstances’ to allow the development, saying that the film studios were ‘simply not needed’.

In its appeal, Graystoke Land argued that the council had ‘exaggerated’ the harm to the green belt and ‘ignored’ its economic benefits.

But minister for housing and planning Matthew Pennycook MP rejected the appeal on June 6 – citing its ‘potential harm to the green belt’.

Government ministers had decided to ‘call in’ the appeal, meaning they would make the final decision themselves after a hearing by a planning inspector.

The government said it supports ‘the growth of the creative industries in the UK’.

But it said it agreed with the inspector that ‘there is likely to be sufficient capacity within existing studio space’ for the industry ‘for the immediate future’.

The government also agreed that Greystoke Land had not searched widely enough for ‘reasonably alternative sites’.

Speaking to councillors on the Maidenhead development management committee on Thursday, June 19, Louise Reid said the decision was the first appeal that the current Labour government ministers had dismissed after calling it in.

She said: “That’s a bit of a feather in our cap that we’ve actually got a dismissed appeal – so good outcome.”

Ms Reid said the cost of defending the council’s decision to refuse permission was down to the number of reasons for refusal, and the length of the hearing.

But she said the cost was less than the £260,000 RBWM had spent on defending its decision to refuse the Spencer’s Farm housing development, which it lost in March last year.

She said the council looked for ‘every cost-cutting measure we could’.

She added: “Overall to get the figures as under control as that is everyone’s doing a good job in trying to manage it.”

Councils can apply for developers to pay some of their costs if they can argue they had appealed unreasonably.

But she said RBWM felt Greystoke ‘hadn’t behaved so unreasonably that we could have reasonably sought costs’.

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