Rural estate decision in Preston reversed
It's after a government inspector looked into a decision to refuse plans
A major housing estate will be built in rural Preston, after a government-appointed inspector reversed a local decision, to refuse permission for the project.
Developer, Wain Homes, last year lodged plans for a 167-dwelling development on land off James Towers Way in Broughton.
However, members of Preston City Council’s planning committee rejected the proposal in December – on the advice of the authority’s planning officers – after hearing it would eat into a buffer zone designed to prevent the village from merging with the northern part of urban Preston.
The 10.3-hectare site, west of the Broughton bypass and south of Whittingham Lane, also lies in an area designated as open countryside, where local policy dictates any developments should usually be small-scale.
But the housebuilder appealed to the Planning Inspectorate, which has now overturned the refusal after concluding the scheme would do more good than harm.
During the meeting at which they debated the application, councillors on the committee were confronted with an uncommon quandary. While they were told by town hall planners that they should reject the development, they learned local opinion was largely in favour of the blueprint – a rare reversal of the usual situation faced by planning committee members.
Broughton Parish Council strongly supported the scheme, because of the new infrastructure that Wain Homes had promised would accompany its housing. That included a community centre, care home, allotments and more car parking space for an expanding local primary school.
Pat Hastings, chair of the parish council, had praised Wain Homes for agreeing to provide the facilities the community said it needed. But the committee ultimately concluded that it could not risk setting a precedent by going against the city council’s own planning policy.
However, planning inspector Helen Hockenhull, who chaired a public inquiry following Wain Homes’ appeal, has now granted permission for the development – in spite of the site neither being allocated for development in the current Preston Local Plan nor the Central Lancashire version (the CLLP) that will shortly replace it.
In a 23-page decision report, she extolled the benefits that the scheme would bring – and said she had attributed “substantial weight” to them.
The land to be allocated to Broughton-in-Amonderness Church of England Primary School would be sufficient not only to expand the current “limited” on-site parking, but also provide an area for outdoor learning, play and sport, the inspector noted.
Ms. Hockenhull said the community building, to be run by the parish council, would, at up to 400 square metres, offer the kind of larger, publicly-run gathering space the village currently lacks.
She also alighted upon the developer’s pledge to deliver 35 percent of the dwellings as discounted ‘affordable housing’, although that is a standard planning policy requirement in rural parts of Preston, while highlighting that the proposed care home would enable residents to remain in the village if they reached a point where they need “additional support”.
Meanwhile, assessing the planning issues at the heart of the application, the inspector concluded that a reduction in the so-called ‘area of separation’ between Broughton and urban Preston would not result in any “merging” of the two.
She said there had been several residential developments to the south of Broughton over the past decade and that the site of the Wain Homes proposal lay in the remaining “gap” between that expansion and the bypass.
Ms. Hockenhull added that it was also important to consider how separation buffer “is actually experienced” by people.
“Traveling from the roundabout at the motorway junction onto James Towers Way, there is a feeling of leaving the urban area of Preston,” she said.
“The character of the area distinctly changes to one of more open fields with existing vegetation and trees.”
She noted that a “landscape buffer” was to be provided along the eastern border of the site alongside James Towers Way – ranging between 24 and 42 metres deep – which would help “screen the development”
Ms. Hockenhull accepted that Preston City Council’s Local Plan and a Central Lancashire-wide development strategy dating back to 2012 should be given “full weight” in coming to a decision on the application – and acknowledged the proposal was in conflict with both policies.
However, while the site sits beyond Broughton’s “defined settlement boundary”, the inspector found that the borders of the village as currently drawn are “clearly out of date” in the wake of the “significant growth” that has taken place over the past decade. Within four years of the completion of the bypass in 2017, another 700 people had been added to the Broughton population, taking it to almost 2,500.
Ms. Hockenhall noted that the CLLP recognises the changes to the village and will reclassify Broughton as a “rural local service centre” from its current status a “smaller rural village”.
On balance, she concluded “the benefits of the proposal outweigh the policy harm…identified” – and that, in this instance, the proposal should not be determined in accordance with local planning policy.
The LDRS approached Broughton Parish Council for comment.