Appeals reporter rejects proposal for 70 houses
Plan included development on slice of greenbelt
Plans by developers for 70 houses and a cemetery on partly greenbelt land in Strathblane have been turned down.
Scottish Government appeals reporter Karen Heywood this week dismissed an appeal from Gladman Developments, who had wanted to develop a site on the A891 Campsie Road opposite Broadgate House.
Last November Stirling Council’s planning committee rejected Gladman’s planning application considering it contrary to the Stirling Local Development Plan and a number of planning policies including sustainable development.
The developers had hoped the ‘gifting’ of land for a new cemetery in the village would help to persuade panel members to give the scheme the go-ahead and a third of the homes, they said, would be ‘affordable’.
However the application attracted 80 objections and a 190-signature petition from villagers.
In her findings, Ms Heywood said eroding the green belt for a development of up to 70 houses on the site could not be considered “development in the right place”.
She said: “The development for up to 70 houses on this 11 hectare greenfield site would constitute a large and prominent extension of the built-up area into the open countryside which currently contains the village. I therefore consider this would be contrary to the purpose of the green belt in this location.”
She added that a site of this size could not be considered ‘controlled small-scale expansion’ of Strathblane, particularly as the proposed 70 houses would be additional to 30 recently completed houses on another site in the village.
The report went on: “While the appellant suggests that, by applying council policy, up to 23 of the proposed houses could be affordable houses, there is no specific evidence that the proposed development would provide further significant economic and social support, other than the future use of land on the eastern side of the appeal site as a cemetery.”
Ms Heywood said the Gladman proposal had been for three times the number of homes allocated at another site in the village, which although allocated in the LDP had since been shelved by separate developers.
In terms of Stirling Council’s overall five-year housing land supply, the reporter said the methodology for calculating this was currently “a matter of considerable dispute, principally between local planning authorities and those with an interest in building new houses or in securing planning permission for residential developments”.
She added that as things currently stood she was “not in a position to contradict the council’s conclusion that its 2017 annual housing land audit confirms that the commitment to maintaining a five year effective housing land supply is currently being met”.
Historic Environment Scotland had raised concerns that the Gladman proposal could adversely impact on the setting of a the chambered cairn. Broadgate Mound, believed to be 4000- to 6000 years-old, at the south of the site.
The reporter said that, while she agreed it could have some detrimental impact on the setting of the monument, on its own that would not have been enough to justify dismissal of the appeal. She added, however, that it was an additional factor “weighing in the balance against the proposals”.
Stirling MSP Bruce Crawford said: “I am pleased the Scottish Government reporter has arrived at a decision following this appeal. I have opposed this particular proposed development at the outset, as I know many in the community have too. Therefore, I feel that this is the right decision.”