A bid to build a 95-home estate in the Preston countryside, which had twice been rejected by councillors, has now also been thrown out by a government planning inspector.
Gladman Developments Limited sought permission for the scheme – on land off Garstang Road, on the edge of Broughton – last year.
In October, members of Preston City Council’s planning committee refused the application after concluding it would lead to the “unplanned expansion of a rural village” on land classed as open countryside. That was the same conclusion they had reached when first asked to judge the blueprint for the rural plot in April 2019.
The developer appealed against the latest decision to the Planning Inspectorate, but that body has now upheld the city council’s refusal of the plans.
A government-appointed inspector identified only as LN Hughes chaired a planning inquiry into the proposal and also paid a visit to the site. They found that there was nothing in local planning policy to suggest that “a specific village should support an additional 95 dwellings in the adjacent countryside”.
Hughes also noted that since other developments in the area had been permitted back in 2018, only “an additional Co-op store” had been added to the services available in Broughton – and suggested a “tipping point” may have come regarding the “sustainability” of further housebuilding.
The inspector noted that the proposed estate would “conflict” with Preston’s local plan and that – because the city authority was currently meeting a government requirement to set aside five years worth of land to meet its new housing targets, unlike in 2018 – there was no other reason to approve the application.
Outlining the reasons for their decision, Hughes said in a report: “The proposed development would not be in a suitable location for housing, due to its countryside location, its outcome of expanding a settlement identified as within the lowest level of the development plan settlement hierarchy, and that expansion being of a significant scale.”
However, the inspector accepted that local concerns over the impact of traffic from the estate could have been mitigated by a proposed £50,000 developer contribution towards “ongoing improvements to the A6 corridor”.
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