How can we win our case and yet still lose?
Those wishing to purchase clothing from M&S can still have it delivered to the Gallagher Retail Park store or have items delivered to their own front door as per the normal procedure online. All is not lost! PARAGRAPH 74 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) 2012 stipulates that sports facilities should not be built on unless one of three specific exceptions is met.
In our naivety, those of us presenting Bradley Park Golf Club’s case against development supposed that if we persuaded the Planning Inspector that none of those exceptions were fulfilled, the development would be quashed and the Local Plan adjudged unsound. This we sought to do at the hearings.
In her recently-issued report, the Inspector categorically ruled out two of the three exceptions and is somewhat ambivalent – although on flawed logic, I think – on the remaining one. Even so, she records her overall impression that “paragraph 74 in the NPPF is not met”.
Accordingly it appears nobody – not even the Inspector – considers that any of the three exceptions in NPPF paragraph 74 are fulfilled. So why is the course to be built on when paragraph 74 says it should not be?
The Inspector justifies this on other considerations (housing need). Is this departure from NPPF provisions allowable? I don’t know. But I do know there are other sites available.
I also know that NPPF paragraph 182 states that to be sound a Local Plan must be “consistent with national policy”. This is usually understood to mean compliant with NPPF policies, which this plan, by the Inspector’s own admission, isn’t!
The upshot is that the golf club appears to have successfully shown that the proposed development is not compliant with paragraph 74 but has nevertheless been deprived of the result which one would expect to flow from that.
We win the case… but we still lose! N. HINCHCLIFFE hits the nail on the head, suggesting roofing New Street (Market hall move would bring boost, Examiner, February 1).
Bury is a fine example of a bustling shopping centre with all the main shops undercover. To improve parking excavate St George’s Square and put a fourstorey car park underneath.
Most major towns and cities have underground car parking, many times adjacent to the rail station or in the city centre.
Unfortunately this town has gone so far down the pan that if there was excellent parking outside the station, people would use it as an opportunity to park their car and go shopping elsewhere.
Thinking positively, commuters could park their cars while going to earn ‘city’ money in Leeds and Manchester then come back and spend it here (if there were any shops).
Any new developments proposed should have staff and/or public car parking underneath. When will Kirklees Council realise that being anti-motorist doesn’t pay?
All this may seem extravagant but not as hair-brained as an aerial ropeway from Barry Sheerman’s ‘thriving town’ centre to a hotel complex. DAVID Gill argues that no-one should be allowed to build on Castle Hill (Don’t sacrifice Castle Hill heritage for greed, Examiner, February 5).
It may have escaped his notice but there have been a range of building activities going on up there for 4,000 years.
More recently there has been an inn since 1811, and in the 1850s an inn and Temperance hotel. I’m sure that all visitors to Castle Hill came for the aesthetic reasons he speaks of, not just for refreshments.
We have had a period of less salubrious activities up there, he may recall, which a pub may have curtailed.
As for his proposal of a referendum, we’d probably end up with a two-and-a-half year debate and a backstop in Almondbury.