Councillors ‘ignoring local plan’ claim

A RESIDENTS’ group has raised alarms that Rossendale councillors “appear to be ignoring their own Local Plan” in their approach to a planning application in Edenfield.

Richard Nuttall’s planning application for outline permission for up to six dwellings adjacent to 59 Blackburn Road is due to go before the council’s development control committee next week. The proposal is recommended for refusal by the planning officer, as it was before the previous committee meeting two months ago, only for it to be deferred by committee members.

In a letter to the Free Press, Edenfield

Community Neighbourhood Forum (ECNF) said: “The proposal concerns part of the land which was controversially stripped of green belt status and allocated for housing under reference H66 by the Local Plan approved last December.

“Site H66 is estimated to yield 400 new homes and the Local Plan specifies eleven separate provisions which must be satisfied before development can be approved, including that ‘the comprehensive development of the entire site is demonstrated through a masterplan with an agreed programme of implementation and phasing’. No information was submitted with the application to demonstrate compliance with any of the provisions.”

They went on: “The fact that the application was deferred rather than rejected suggests that the councillors are looking to circumvent the Local Plan policy requirements for site H66.

“A further concern is that waiving the prerequisite of a masterplan for this application could have consequences, such as putting the Council under pressure to do likewise for applications for other parts of site

H66.”

Papers prepared ahead of Tuesday evening’s planning committee, state that the proposed scheme is “inappropriate in principle”.

The planning manager’s report states: “The submitted application for outline planning permission does not form part of a masterplan, and has not been submitted with any information relating to a design code for the wider allocation.

“Furthermore, no information has been submitted to demonstrate compliance with any of the points contained within Policy H66, other than point 7 (compensatory improvements to Green Belt land). In the absence of any such information or masterplan, it is considered that the proposals would be a piecemeal form of development within Housing Allocation H66 – a situation which Policy H66 has been specifically worded to avoid.”

A Rossendale council spokesperson said: “Members are entitled to defer an application if they feel that they do not have sufficient information to determine the application.

“A final decision has not yet been made and the Development Control Committee will consider the application at the next meeting having regards to the local plan and all the information it has before it at that time.”