Emery Planning have secured Permission in Principle (PiP) at appeal on behalf of Nest Housing for a residential development of up to 9 dwellings at land to the south of Chatburn Old Road, Chatburn. The site is located adjacent to a recently constructed housing development known as Hare Hill (shown on the picture below). It is outside of but adjacent to the settlement boundary of Chatburn as established in a recently adopted plan (the Housing and Economic Development Development Plan Document – HED DPD, adopted 15th October 2019). The Council claims that it can demonstrate a five year supply of deliverable housing land. Notwithstanding this, Ribble Valley’s Core Strategy allows for development beyond settlement boundaries of Tier 1 settlements such as Chatburn where it meets the definition of “expansion” or “consolidation” as set out in the glossary to the Core Strategy. Whilst this position had been previously accepted by Ribble Valley at an inquiry in 2019, it did not accept this to be the case for the Chatburn appeal until a late stage in the appeal process and as a result, the Inspector allowed a partial award of costs against the Council. Instead, the Council did seek to argue at the hearing that the site was not closely related to the main built up area of Chatburn. However, the Inspector disagreed and concluded that the site “is no more ‘on a limb’ than existing housing, is well related in physical and visual terms to existing housing and is only a modest walk from the services and facilities at the foot of Chatburn Old Road”. The Inspector concluded that the proposal would assist in meeting the minimum housing requirement for Chatburn set out in the Core Strategy and allowed the appeal.
The permission in principle consent route is an alternative way of obtaining planning permission for housing led development which separates the consideration of matters of principle for proposed development from the technical detail of the development. The permission in principle consent route has two stages: the first stage (or permission in principle stage) establishes whether a site is suitable in-principle and the second (‘technical details consent’) stage is when the detailed development proposals are assessed. Following the appeal decision, Emery Planning are instructed by Nest Housing to progress the application for technical details.
