11 Nov 2024
The appeal by developers against the refusal of planning permission to build 95 houses on Green Belt land in Park Street has been allowed by the Planning Inspector.
The public inquiry over the proposals, which are for land opposite the BP garage, ran for five days in September with community group Greenbelt, fighting the developer, Scott Properties.
This appeal was notable by the fact that the district council, after initially refusing the application, decided not to offer any evidence in the defence of their decision.
This left Greenbelt fighting the developer on their own using the rare status as a ‘Rule 6 Party’, which gave full power to cross-examine other parties and put forward witnesses to substantiate their case.
The developer employed two barristers, including Zac Simons, one of the top planning barristers in the country, leaving Greenbelt to argue their case with the help of community representatives in what was very much a David and Goliath battle.
Paul King from Greenbelt led the campaign and the Rule 6 Party at the appeal: “It is devastating news for the local community who will now visually see Park Street
merge with St Albans.
“Planning officers and the Inspector just couldn’t understand that the separation of communities can’t be determined by aerial photos – it is what is seen and felt on the
ground that counts.
“The whole purpose of the Green Belt was to avoid the coalescence of communities, and this appeal illustrates how a well-financed developer can undermine this principle, and find consultants that will argue against what the residents know to be the truth, and meet their objective of making vast sums of money.
“We do have a housing shortfall in the district, which was the overriding factor that caused the appeal to be allowed. However, the elimination of this farmland will do little to address the actual need. Instead it will attract wealthy purchasers from north London, creating yet further pressure on local facilities”.
The Inspector recognised that harms would be caused by the proposal, in particular to the Green Belt, and stated: “In my view, the introduction of dwellings on the site would result in substantial harm to the Green Belt purpose of safeguarding the countryside from encroachment”.
She added: “The proposal would result in definitional harm to the Green Belt and would conflict with two purposes of the Green Belt.”
However she concluded: “It is my planning judgement that the Green Belt harms and other harm resulting from the proposal would be clearly outweighed by the other identified considerations such as to justify a grant of permission.”
Greenbelt’s team consisted of Nuala Webb and Terrie Smith, both district councillors for Park Street, David Yates, chair of the Parish Council and Shirani McCarthy who chairs another campaign group, Keep Chiswell Green.
Nuala, who spoke on transport matters, said after the ruling: “It is a very sad situation, the Inspector disregarded the chronic traffic situation along Watling Street, and instead merely looked at how many traffic movements would be generated by the 95 houses.
“The fact that many of these new residents would struggle to access their homes at certain times of day, was overlooked. The Inspector also chose to disregard the massive increase in traffic that we will see along this road once the rail freight terminal is operational.”
The Inspector described the location of the site as sustainable and ruled that it was acceptable to travel 2.3km to a doctors without any public transport, despite her saying that “numerous local residents cite issues with the limited capacity of the surgery”.
Terrie, who made representations on sustainability at the appeal, said: “The reality of living on this development will be that new residents will be dependent on cars, and to pretend that it will cause a shift away from the private car is a fallacy. Little regard has been paid to the limited, infrequent and unreliability of the buses and train”.
The Inspector awarded most of the costs of the appeal against the council, due to what she termed, their “unreasonable behaviour”.
The fifth member of the Greenbelt team was Shirani, who made the comment: “The Rule 6 Party certainly caused the developer to have to work hard for their permission. Paul did a great job at challenging the developer’s evidence and cross-examining their witnesses, making a mockery of the evidence of their Highways witness in particular.”
“However, the decisions in these inquiries always boil down to the inspector’s opinion as to whether building more houses is more important than protecting the Green Belt.
“It would have been very interesting to see whether the Inspector’s decision would have been swayed the other way had our local council officers supported the decision of the elected councillors to refuse permission for this development and mounted a strong defence of the refusal.
“After two planning committee meetings, at the second of which the elected councillors decided to refuse permission, how was a third meeting allowed to be conducted behind closed doors at which a new mix of councillors came up with a different decision? Where is the transparency of decision-making that we, as residents of the district, have the right to?”
Paul added: “I always try to find positives from any situation, however this approval merely demonstrates that planning officers, who in my opinion are at the core of the
community’s planning problems, have an agenda which conflicts with the residents’ wishes. In this instance, they were able to engineer the withdrawal of the objection by the council, leaving the developer only facing a community organisation at the appeal.”
