Out-Law News 2 min. read

Planned 1,800-home Surrey site called in for review


Waverley Borough Council's decision to grant planning permission for an 1,800-home scheme on a disused airfield in Surrey has been 'called in' for review by the communities secretary.

An independent planning inspector will now hold a local inquiry into the decision, and make a recommendation to the communities secretary about whether or not the scheme should go ahead as planned.

Council leader Julia Potts said that she was "surprised and disappointed" by the decision, which came despite local planning officers' recommendations to proceed with the development.

"[C]alling in the Dunsfold Park application appears to go against current government policy and the recently published housing white paper," she said. "These encourage brownfield development and the creation of new settlements and garden villages."

"Dunsfold Park ticks all those boxes and provides significant benefits to the local community in terms of affordable housing, jobs and public space, as well as education and health facilities as part of a village centre. We have worked hard with the applicant to address the sustainability aspects of the application and secured a commitment from them to deliver significant improvements to the highways infrastructure, such as a high-quality bus service and improvements to existing foot/cycle links. The application also secures a significant financial developer contribution to make improvements to local and strategic infrastructure," she said.

Potts added that the council would "robustly defend" its decision to grant planning permission to the development despite the costs of a public inquiry.

The date and location for the public inquiry will be announced by the Planning Inspectorate.

The council's joint planning committee approved a hybrid planning application for the Dunsfold Park development on 14 December 2016. Developers have proposed a new settlement of 1,800 new homes, space for new businesses, amenity space and supporting infrastructure.

The communities secretary refused a previous application for a 2,600-home development at the site in 2009 on the grounds of transport impacts and prematurity. However, a subsequent consultation found "overwhelming" local support for building up to 3,400 homes at the site, a former aerodrome which has been used to record the BBC's Top Gear since 2002.

Planning law expert Jonathan Leary of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that it was "interesting that just a few weeks after publishing a housing white paper that has 'fixing our broken housing market' at its heart that the secretary of state is using his call-in powers to decide this application himself."

"At first glance the secretary of state’s decision appears to fly in the face of localism and the government’s expressed intention to increase housing supply. The decision to call-in the application will only lead to a delay to the approval of much needed housing. However, the application appears to have proved controversial locally and concerns have been raised that its approval pre-empted the planning authority’s local plan which it submitted for examination only one week after the decision to approve the developer’s application. These factors may have influenced the secretary of state’s decision to call this application in for his determination," he said.

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