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Residents of a Preston village will be denied the local facilities they desperately need if plans for a new housing estate are rejected, a community leader has warned.
Broughton Parish Council chair Pat Hastings says the vast majority of locals support a bid by developer Wain Homes to build up to 167 properties on land off the Broughton bypass – because of the infrastructure that the firm has promised to deliver alongside the dwellings.
As part of the blueprint for the site, a community building, care home, allotments and land to extend the car park of a local primary school have all been pledged, following consultation with the parish.
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However, Preston City Council planners have recommended that the authority’s planning committee refuse permission for the proposal when they discuss it at a meeting on Thursday (4th December).
City planning officers say that the development – to the west of James Towers Way and south of Whittingham Lane – would breach local planning policy, because it sits in open countryside, which also acts as an “area of separation between the urban area of Preston and the village of Broughton”. That buffer would be eroded as a result of the proposed housing, town hall officials have concluded.
However, Cllr Hastings says that – unlike a corresponding area of separation to the north of the village – the southern green space has already seen three developments approved within it, reducing the need to protect it from a further one.
She also told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the city council could and should show the same flexibility as it did when approving a mosque on the other side of the Broughton bypass, off D’Urton Lane – when meeting a “community need” was factored into the decision.
“We’ve proved the community need [for the facilities promised by Wain Homes] through our neighborhood plan and all the consultations we have done.
“Back in 2021, we asked [residents whether] we could talk to developers – and it was very much a case of, ‘Yes, if you get something out of it.’
“We’d be getting community building – the focus of which is going to be youth [activities] and health and wellbeing provision. But the whole point of that building is that it’s going to be modular, so we can add to it – and double or quadruple it in size – according to demand.
“We’d be getting the allotments and community garden – I’ve got people queuing up [for plots] – and then Preston also [benefits] from the care home,” Cllr Hastings said.
Acknowledging that the parish council has often been on the other side of the debate over housebuilding in and around the village, she said that it was not that Broughton was suddenly seeking “large-scale development”, but rather the “meaningful long-term benefits for the village” that come with this particular one.
She added that Wain Homes had “been fantastic” in accommodating what Broughton had said it needed.
Four public objections have been lodged over the plans – far fewer than the number that a development of the scale proposed often attracts in Preston’s villages.
The planning committee meeting takes place in the town hall on Thursday at 2pm.
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