46 homes coming to growing Somerset town after appeal
A total of 16 affordable homes will be provided as part of the development in Castle Cary
Nearly 50 new homes will be coming to a growing Somerset town following a successful appeal.
Castle Cary LVA LLP applied in October 2023 for outline permission to build 46 homes on the B3152 South Street in Castle Cary, just north of the town’s cemetery.
Somerset Council’s planning committee south (which handles major applications in the former South Somerset area) threw out the plans in January 2025 after a lengthy debate.
The Planning Inspectorate has now overturned this decision, arguing that the need to deliver additional housing in the area outweighed concerns about building outside the town’s current boundary.
The new homes will be sandwiched between the cemetery and the existing homes on Cockhill Elm Lane, with pedestrian access being provided onto the former to link up with the Macmillan Way long-distance footpath.
While there are pavements linking the site to the town centre, they are quite narrow in places and there is limited provision for cyclists or mobility scooters.
A total of 16 affordable homes will be provided as part of the development, meeting the 35 per cent target for affordable homes within the South Somerset Local Plan.
Planning inspector C. Butcher visited the site on October 6 and 8, publishing his decision on the Planning Inspectorate’s official website on Monday (November 17).
Mr Butcher acknowledged that the site was “outside of the development area for Castle Cary”, and that the majority of local housing growth had been identified to the north of the town (prompting the ongoing governance review involving the neighbouring village of Ansford).
But he added that there was “no substantive evidence” that building additional homes in this location, or in the town as a whole, would adversely affect local services, including schools and doctors’ surgeries.
He said: “I noted that there is a pavement on the entire route between the appeal site and the town centre, thereby allowing a range of services and facilities to be reached within a relatively easy walking distance.
“I did observe that there are some historic steps along the route where the pavement rises slightly up above the level of the road.
“While I acknowledge that this would make the journey more difficult for disabled people or parents with pushchairs, it is readily apparent that the pavement would provide a safe and convenient route into the town centre for the vast majority of future occupiers of the proposed homes.”
Mr Butcher dismissed concerns that the planned development would harm the town’s conservation area, arguing that the site was “almost wholly screened” by mature trees and other vegetation on its northern and eastern sides.
He said: “It is clear that the proposed development would appear as being
well-related to the existing urban form, rather than a contrived incursion into the surrounding countryside.
“The grade two star listed Lower Cockhill Farmhouse is quite some distance from the appeal site, with several fields, farm buildings and mature trees in between.
“The potential to include a landscape buffer to the western edge of the appeal site would ensure that any visibility between the two would be minimal.”
Castle Cary lies within the River Brue catchment area, meaning that developers must secure additional mitigation to prevent any net increase in phosphates on the Somerset Levels and Moors.
To mitigate the impact of the new homes, the developer proposes installing a package treatment plant within the site, managed by Albion Water, which will filter out phosphates from household drains before it enters the watercourse.
Mr Butcher accepted that the development would result in the loss of grade one agricultural land (i.e. among the best and most versatile in the UK), but said the site represented “a relatively small area of land” and therefore this loss would only cause “limited harm”.
The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was revised by the government in late-2024, with a standard methodology being introduced to determine how many new homes each council had to deliver in a given year.
As part of its drive to build 1.5 million new homes over the current parliament, the government has upped Somerset’s annual housing target from 2,669 to 3,769 – an increase of 41 per cent.
Since the council does not currently have a five-year land supply, any decision to refuse plans for new homes must be accompanied by “strong” reasons for refusal.
Mr Butcher concluded: “The lack of a sufficient supply of land means that very limited weight should be afforded to the theoretical notion of undermining the council’s spatial strategy.
“When considered collectively, I still conclude that the harm overall would be moderate.”
A reserved matters application, covering the detailed design and layout of the new homes, is expected to be submitted to the council in the new year.