Plans to build 125 homes in the Preston countryside make a comeback
Plans to build more than 100 homes on the outskirts of a Preston village have been resurrected – seven years after they first emerged.
Permission for the proposed estate – on the edge of Goosnargh – has been rejected on two previous occasions, but a slightly modified version is now back on the table.
Gladman Developments wants to build 125 properties on land north of Whittingham Lane – a reduction from the 145 that the firm has previously suggested.
The dwellings would range from two to five bedrooms in size – and 35 percent of them would be offered as discounted ‘affordable housing’, as required by local planning policy.
In a statement lodged with the application, the firm promises to provide “generous” areas of open space within the development, including a children’s play facility.
It adds that the new housing would create “a comfortable and welcoming edge to the village…rounding off the western side …[and] enhancing the wider area”.
However, the site – made up of three individual fields – is classed as ‘open countryside’, meaning significant development would not usually be permitted there.
Preston City Council’s planning committee originally gave the green light to the proposal in December 2018, because – at the time of the decision – the authority did not have five years worth of land set aside to meet its new housing targets.
Failure to fulfil that the government requirement left the council in a position where it could only refuse the 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 the six cases after all of them were the subject of a public inquiry, which reported back exactly two years later.
Earlier this month, a fresh application for another of those sites – part of the former Swainson House Farm, off Goosnargh Lane – was once again refused by Preston City Council.
The authority’s planning officers had initially recommended that the fresh application – for up to 95 homes – be approved, because the council was once again in a position where it could not demonstrate a five-year supply of housing land.
However, that calculation changed during the planning process and, by the time the matter was finally decided upon by the planning committee, the authority was able to show a six-and-a-half-year supply.
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