Plans for Preston countryside housing estate set to be refused - again
Controversial and long-running plans for a new housing estate in the Preston countryside look set to be rejected for a third time.
The blueprint for the 125-home development, north of Whittingham Lane in Goosnargh, will be considered by Preston City Council’s planning committee next week.
The authority’s planning officers have recommended the proposal – a slightly larger version of which was first made back in 2018 – be refused again.
Gladman Developments argued in its application for the site that the properties – between two and five bedrooms in size – would serve as a “welcoming edge” to the village, rounding off Goosnargh.
The firm also pledged to meet a local planning policy requirement for 35 percent of the dwellings – accessed from Churchghate, off Church Lane – to be offered as discounted ‘affordable housing’.
However, a report by town hall planners – to be presented to planning committee members on Thursday (7th August) – concludes that the estate would result in “the unplanned expansion of a rural village”.
It adds that the major development is not of the type deemed acceptable in what is classed as an area of “open countryside” in Preston’s local plan – and is contrary to the policy of focussing growth on previously developed “brownfield” land.
The planning committee originally gave the green light to what was then a 145-home blueprint back in December 2018, because – at that time – the city council did not have five years worth of land set aside to meet its new housing targets.
The council was briefly back in that position earlier this year, but is no longer so.
Failure to fulfil that the government requirement left the council in a position, in 2018, whereby it could only refuse the Gladman application if the disadvantages of the development significantly outweighed the benefits it would bring in bridging the housing shortfall.
However, the proposal – and five others which were approved in and around Goosnargh – were all ‘called in’ for consideration by the government at the request of the area’s then MP.
By the time that process was complete, the authority was able to show it had sufficient land available for housebuilding for the next five years, leading it to reconsider the applications – including the one for Whittingham Lane – and refuse them in February 2020.
Attempts to overturn those refusals failed in five out of six cases after all of them were the subject of a public inquiry, which reported back two years later.