CYCLING FOR EQUITY
Developer appeals refusal to inspector
It was a sight to make you do a double take. Thirty suffragettes, cycling by one of Yorkshire’s most loved natural sites. But members of Queensbury Queens Cycling Club had a serious message beyond their costumes, highlight the need for parity in their sport.
A PLANNING inspector is to investigate complaints that a developer was “cheated” in an assessment of Green Belt land which prevented a site promoted for housing from even being considered by planners.
Barnsley Council used external consultant Arup to ‘score’ potential development sites across the town as it began the search for new housing sites and land provisionally known as Oxspring Fields, promoted by Harrogatebased developer Yorkshire Land, missed the threshold by one point.
However, the company insist there were two mistakes within the scoring calculation which would have put the land into a position where the council should have carried out further investigative work about its potential to become a councilbacked site.
Stephen Green, who owns Yorkshire Land, has been fighting to get the site – which could accommodate about 150 houses – included in Barnsley Council’s list of sites earmarked for development in the next two decades, but planners have resisted his arguments.
However, Mr Green has now told a Government planning inspector, who must sign off the council’s blueprint as ‘sound’ before it can become policy, that there were two errors which led to the site being excluded.
One was a simple miscalculation and the other a flawed decision, with a score being allocated which failed to reflect the circumstances of the site, with either error capable of pushing the overall score into the category where it should have been considered, he said.
Hearings are now taking place to hear evidence and observations from all those involved in the process.
Mr Green told the inspector: “We have been cheated because our site has not been taken properly through the process.
“It seems very unfair; the council is trying to wriggle out. I cannot see how the council can say the process has been fair.”
The council’s head of planning Joe Jenkinson said Arup had confirmed there had been a miscalculation but not one that affected the overall score, and added: “I have some sympathy over the scoring confusion.
“We went back to Arup. They defend their impartiality.
“There is an error, not in respect of the total, it is in a sub-category where they used the wrong number.”
Planning Inspector Sarah Housden has now offered to look at the full circumstances of the way the Oxspring Fields site was handled outside the current hearings.
She will consider evidence which has been presented and report back later in the year as to whether she finds the council’s proposals acceptable.
Supporters of the scheme say that a large-scale development would bring affordable homes which were much needed by younger people who were struggling to find homes in the village.
I have some sympathy over the scoring confusion. Joe Jenkinson, Barnsley Council’s head of planning.