Plans to build more than a dozen homes across two sites in rural Chorley have been kicked out by councillors amid a wrangle over the difference between green belt and grey belt.
A total of 17 properties were proposed for a pair of plots in Eccleston – nine on Shelley Drive and eight on Bradley Lane – less than a mile apart from each other.
Chorley Council planning officers identified both parcels of land as grey belt – a new concept introduced by the government last year with the intention of boosting housebuilding.
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Reclassification of green belt sites as grey belt reduces the usual restrictions on development in such areas – because they are no longer deemed to “strongly contribute” to the green belt’s primary purposes, including preventing urban sprawl and protecting the countryside from encroachment.
However, it was obvious from the outset of the debate on the two proposals that most members of the council’s cross-party planning committee – charged with making the final decision on the applications – saw the Eccleston sites very differently to the authority’s planning officials.
The two proposals – from different applicants, but with the same agent speaking on behalf of both – were considered separately, but had the same key conundrum running through each of them.
Committee member Cllr Alan Whittaker said of the Shelley Drive site: “You couldn’t get any more green – it’s a pasture …it’s plainly green as it could be.” On the Bradley Drive plot, he added: “It’s not just a field, it’s open countryside.”
However, planning agent Alexis de Pol told the meeting that it was “of complete irrelevance” for members to be attempting to determine the status of the land through that simplistic prism.
“It is simply incorrect for the committee to say [a location] is not grey belt simply because it’s a greenfield site,” he cautioned.
Mr. De Pol also rejected the characterisation of Eccleston as a “historic” village in need of special protection, an argument made by committee member, Cllr Katie Wilkie. She cited its listing in the Doomsday Book of 1086 and the fact that it was known to have had settlements and a church back in the 14th century.
“When you drive down a village, you don’t expect to see every little green space filled with…properties,” Cllr Wilkie said.
However, Chorley Council’s head of planning, Kevin Foster, told the committee that appeal decisions that had previously gone against the authority had given “a good steer” on what constituted grey belt – and, speaking specifically specifically about the Shelley Drive site, he said officers were “firmly of the view” that it fell into the new category.
Planning officer Iain Crossland added that it was “a considerable distance from the nearest large built-up areas” and so was not considered to contribute to the prevention of sprawl.
Members were repeatedly told that an additional factor weighing in favour of the applications was that Chorley Council does not have five years’ worth of land set aside to meet its minimum new housing requirements, as demanded by the government.
That “unmet need” – together with the grey belt classification and the fact Eccleston was considered a “sustainable” location – meant that the proposed developments should not be deemed inappropriate under national planning rules, papers presented to the committee indicated.
Reluctantly bucking the trend amongst his colleagues, Cllr Craige Southern said he had “tested” the distinction between green and grey belt by backing refusal of other applications on that basis – but added he had to accept that developers had then won the appeals they made against those decisions.
“We’re sitting here scratching our heads, [thinking] ‘Well, [this has] got to be green belt, because it’s a green field [and] it’s got sheep in it.’
“Sadly, as much as it pains me to say [it], this particular [site] is grey belt,” Cllr Southern said of the Shelley Drive plot. He came to the same conclusion about the Bradley Lane land.
However, the committee ultimately refused each of the applications by a majority.
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