Planning secretary holds Bradford Council development plan over green belt concerns

Planning minister Gavin Barwell has issued a holding direction to the council (1-page / 268KB PDF), requiring it "not to take any step in connection with the adoption of the plan" pending further investigation of the issues raised by Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley.

Davies' concerns include "the proposed release of green belt, particularly in Wharfedale, development of green belt before brownfield land is exhausted, the efforts made under the duty to cooperate to meet Bradford's housing need and the appropriate location for development to alleviate housing need and contribute to the regeneration of Bradford city centre", according to the letter.

The holding decision will give Barwell time to decide whether to formally intervene in the case, under section 21 of the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act. The communities secretary was given the power to issue holding directions in May as part of the 2016 Housing and Planning Act.

Planning law expert Tom Edwards of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that the decision closely resembled that of then communities secretary, Brandon Lewis, in respect of Birmingham City Council's development plan earlier this year. As such, it would be a cause for concern for both developers and local planning authorities, he said.

"Like the Birmingham case, Bradford has recently taken its core strategy through examination by an independent inspector and that inspector's report had been received on 22 August," he said. "The council was planning to decide at a full meeting on 18 October whether to adopt the core strategy in accordance with the inspector's recommendations."

"Without more detail from the secretary of state of the purported flawed nature of the green belt case it is difficult to comment further, but these recent decisions will be a cause for concern for developers as well as local planning authorities. They show that the government is willing to exercise its powers to intervene in the adoption of development plans even following extensive public consultation and examination of the development plan by an independent inspector. In doing so, a lacuna in the development plan making process is created and, consequently, planning decisions are affected as there is a lack of an up to date development plan against which planning decisions should be made," he said.

"The direction that was made in respect of the Birmingham development plan remains in place some five months after it was originally made and therefore shows that the government, having made the direction, is not resolving the issues speedily. Indeed, given the late stage in the local plan cycle, one might say there is little the secretary of state can do save require withdrawal of the local plan – which rather flies in the face of the government's stated aim to support authorities to get their local plans in place by 2017," he said.

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) prevents local planning authorities from "inappropriate development" on the green belt, and also restricts any amendments to the green belt unless in exceptional circumstances. In September, an inspector backed Bradford's proposals to release sufficient land from the green belt in order to accommodate 11,000 planned homes, on the grounds that "insufficient land" could be identified "outside of the green belt to fully meet identified housing needs".

In a statement on his website, Shipley MP Philip Davies said that these conclusions were "fundamentally flawed".

"The government clearly states that green belt land should only be used in exceptional circumstances and surely the building of so many houses on green belt land in a village should need particularly exceptional circumstances which I do not believe have been met," he said.