We can’t build 15 homes, let alone 200,000

Having redesigned the scheme three times our application went to committee with a recommendation for approval where the case officer stated that all concerns had been addressed and the scheme was satisfactory. Effectively, we had designed the scheme with full consultation with the planning department and accommodated all of their concerns.

However, the committee decided to defer the decision for a site visit and on 13 June it refused our application. We will now have to appeal against this refusal which I feel sure we will win, but it is a delay of perhaps six months before we will be able to progress this development.

When we first approached the council about this site in 2005, we were advised that there were no objections to residential development in principle. Our scheme for 15 four and five-bedroom detached houses was appropriate for this location and could by now have been built and occupied had we been allowed to build at below the 30 dwellings per hectare required by PPG3 (now PPS3).

If it now takes two to three years to achieve a planning approval on what I believe should have been a relatively simple application then what hope is there for industry in achieving an output rate of 200,000 new homes a year?