New home can be built on site of house demolished on greenbelt land without permission

A new house can be built in the South Ribble greenbelt after the one that previously stood on the site was demolished without permission, councillors have ruled.

A major extension of the property, on Preston New Road in Mellor Brook, was approved by South Ribble Borough Council in November 2023.

That work was to have involved the demolition of the vast majority of the original building, but a meeting of the authority’s planning committee heard that the home was ultimately levelled in its entirety – prompting uproar from neighbours and a visit from the council’s enforcement team.

However, planning officers recommended committee members give the go-ahead to the replacement structure – a one-and-a-half-storey dormer bungalow design, like its predecessor – because it occupied the same proportion of the plot as the extension that the authority had already permitted. In doing so, they also retrospectively approved the completed demolition.

Advertisements

The applicant for the new-build – identified on planning documents only as Mrs. F. Patel – told the meeting that she found herself in “in a distressing and difficult position”.

She added: “I have managed the many challenges that come with a project of this scale and, despite those efforts, this is where …matters stand today.”

However, one of her immediate neighbours said it was they who had suffered as a result of the unauthorised work done on their doorstep.

Caroline Marshall claimed her family had experienced “unnecessary, undue and extreme personal stress” as a result of what she described as “the total disregard of all planning law and processes” .

“This work and the adopted principle by the applicant are on an ‘easier to ask for forgiveness than seek permission’ basis, in my view,” Ms. Marshall said.

Gabriel Nketia – the agent for and designer of the original extension plan, who said he “stepped away” from the project before later being brought back on board – told the committee he could “only apologise for the way the previous contractor managed the site”, but said a “more experienced” one had now been enlisted.

The new home which has now been approved

He added that the new application “stands on its own merits… enhancing the site and [causing] no additional harm to the greenbelt and neighbours”.

Under national planning rules, development in the greenbelt is allowed when it is to replace a building with another that is for the same purpose – and provided the new property is “not materially larger”. In Central Lancashire, the threshold for that assessment is set at no more than a 30 percent increase in the volume of the original premises.

The new bungalow will be 52 percent larger than its flattened forerunner – 68 percent when a new outbuilding is factored in – but that was consistent with what had alrerady been permitted under the previous extension blueprint.

Committee member Cllr Peter Mullineaux said he was “not particularly happy about how this has been done”, asking why there had been no “repercussions” for the unapproved demolition.

Council planning case officer Fiona Hope said the authority’s building control department had decided the breach was “not worthy of prosecution”.

Cllr Phil Smith said there was no denying the “unfortunate history” of the project, but added that that “was not necessarily relevant in planning terms”. He also judged that the proposed new property was a “high-quality well-designed home”.

His committee colleague, Cllr Pete Pillinger, said he hoped that the neighbours would “eventually be able to find ways to get along with one another after this”.

But he added that not approving the fresh plans would leave the cleared land as a “building site”, which would be “intolerable”.

Support Blog Preston: Keep our community reporting going and view the website without any adverts too. Sign up for a membership today.