Government inspector reaches verdict on 95-home Goosnargh village housing estate

Controversial plans to build almost 100 homes on disused farmland on the outskirts of Preston appear to have reached the end of the road – more than six years after they were first proposed.

A planning inspector has upheld a decision made by Preston City Council last year to refuse the latest bid to develop part of the former Swainson Farm site, off Goosnargh Lane, in Goosnargh.

In July, the authority’s planning committee rejected a blueprint to create up to 95 homes on the agricultural plot, where the renowned Goosnargh Duck was once bred. It came amid dozens of public objections, including over the potential impact of the proposed estate on the local road network.

The joint applicants behind the plans – Gillian Wells, Thomas Swarbrick and Lynn Johnson – appealed to the Planning Inspectorate to overturn the refusal, but a government-appointed inspector has now backed the city council’s position.

The inspector, Henry Jones, chaired a one-day hearing public inquiry into the matter early last month and has now published a report in which he concluded that the housing estate would have been in “fundamental conflict” with local planning policy.

The decision marks the fourth time that the development has been refused permission – twice by the city council and twice by a planning inspector on appeal.

A villager who had opposed the latest attempt to build on the site – but did not want to be named – praised both Preston City Council and Whittingham Parish Council in the defence they mounted against the plans.

“The inspector made the right decision, as this would have impacted other developers who have in the past put in large applications and been refused,” the resident told the Local Democracy Reporting Service – suggesting that approval of the proposal could have opened the floodgates to others.

The inspector’s decision revolved around consideration of the planning policy grounds on which the city council had rejected the application. The public’s traffic concerns played no part as Lancashire County Council highways officials did not object to the estate proposal.

A report outlining the reasons for the inspector’s ruling noted that the site was at the bottom of the so-called “settlement hierarchy”, which determines the priority order of locations for development across Central Lancashire. The plot also sits beyond the official borders of the village in an area of open countryside, where Preston’s local plan dictates only small-scale building is permissible.

The appellants had argued that the city council was unable to show that it had enough land set aside in order to meet its annual new housing needs for the next five years – as required by national planning policy. But Mr. Jones calculated that even though there was a dispute between the council and the applicants over exactly how many homes Preston needed to build each year, there was sufficient land available in either scenario.

The inspector also concluded that the benefits of the development were “not of sufficient weight” to outweigh the degree to which it was at odds with local policies.

Plans to develop what were then a proposed 87 homes on the same section of Swainson Farm were amongst six proposed estates that were rejected by the city council in 2020 The authority said the “cumulative impact” of the total 557 dwellings – all in open countryside – would have harmed the character of the village.

Five of those refusals were later upheld by a planning inspector after appeals from the developers behind the blueprints – with the only one to be overturned being a proposal for 40 homes on a separate part of the Swainson site.

Those properties went ahead after the inspector who chaired a public inquiry into all of the original proposals in and around Goosnargh concluded that the smaller of the two farm redevelopments would replace unsightly agricultural buildings which had “a major negative visual effect on the area”.

The city council’s planning committee had originally approved both of the proposed Swainson Farm plans in November 2019 at a point when the authority accepted it could not demonstrate a five-year housing land supply.

However, that decision was later revisited – and reversed – early the following year when the figures changed. A formal decision notice on the proposal had still not been issued at that stage - after an MP pressed for the government to get involved - thereby enabling the authority to shift its stance.