Successful challenge to neighbourhood plan helps developer secure permission for 280-home scheme

The housing and development chapter of the Haddenham Neighbourhood Plan was quashed by a court order (4-page / 64 KB PDF) in March.

Developer Lightwood Strategic (LS) had challenged the decision to allow the plan to proceed to a referendum despite mistakes with the submitted scores for proposed development sites having resulted in some sites being allocated more or fewer homes than would otherwise have been the case.

LS applied to Aylesbury Vale District Council in September 2014 for outline permission to redevelop four arable fields to the south east of Haddenham into a scheme with 350 homes, a community sports facility, public open space and a burial ground. The number of homes proposed was reduced to 280 homes, including 35 homes for the elderly, in December 2014; and the communities secretary called the decision in for his own determination in March 2015.

A decision letter (88-page / 947 KB PDF) on behalf of Clark said that the communities secretary agreed with planning inspector Paul Jackson that permission should be granted for the revised scheme.

The letter said the Council was unable to demonstrate a five year supply of housing and that saved housing policies of the 2004 Aylesbury Vale District Local Plan should be considered out of date. It said very little weight could be given to the emerging Vale of Aylesbury Local Plan, which had not yet been published for consultation.

Haddenham Parish Council had argued that, notwithstanding the fact that the housing and development chapter of the Haddenham Neighbourhood Plan had been quashed, the reasons for LS's site not being considered one of the best located sites remained "a highly material consideration". However, the communities secretary concluded that, "because it has been quashed, the housing and development chapter is no longer part of the development plan and therefore it can no longer be taken into account when determining this planning application".

Clark also did not give any weight to arguments that granting planning permission would be premature in light of plans to produce a replacement Haddenham Neighbourhood Plan, noting that "planning practice guidance ... advises that refusal of planning permission on grounds of prematurity will seldom be justified in respect of a neighbourhood plan before the end of the local planning authority publicity period".

The communities secretary was satisfied that "the benefits of development on the site would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the disadvantages". He found that there would be "substantial advantages to the community in terms of affordable housing and housing for the elderly", as well as transport improvements and new facilities.

Clark had given moderate weight in the planning balance to less than substantial harm to a conservation area and limited weight to traffic concerns.

Planning expert Jamie Lockerbie of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said: "This turn of events goes to show that a developer or landowner who has a genuine grievance against policies proposed in an emerging neighbourhood plan should give real thought to making a legal challenge to the plan if it wants those policies quashed."

"If problematic policies can be quashed then this will remove a major obstacle to successfully securing planning permission, as this story has shown. If, however, the plan is not challenged and the six week judicial review period expires, the third party applicant will be left having to argue against development plan policy which is rarely an easy feat," Lockerbie said.