Tory MP inadvertantly admits Tory planning policy to blame for planning approvals

This week saw the latest controversial planning application to hit our area approved, with permission granted to build 330 new homes on the site of the iconic Tall Trees hotel (read the Evening Gazette report here).

The initial determination was deferred in December to allow the council the opportunity to take legal advice on the suggested grounds for refusal. At this week's meeting, enough councillors changed their mind to see the application approved, after the opinion of Alan Evans QC stated "...the merits of the Council’s reasons for refusal are weak and that they would be very unlikely to be defended successfully on appeal."

Furthermore, Alan Evans QC continued: "I also think that the Council is in territory where it would be at significant risk of an award of costs on the basis of unreasonable refusal". (You can read the full legal opinion here).

Whilst I have been a critic of the Tories' new planning rules from their inception, and indeed they were one of the major reasons for my resigning from the Conservative party (see here), hitherto our local Tory MP has refused to criticise the new rules.

However, in today's Darlington and Stockton Times, the mask slipped.

Although Mr Wharton, Tory MP for Stockton South, "refused to respond" to my call for him to speak out against the damaging planning reforms his government has introduced, he did comment:

"The reason Stockton Council keeps passing planning applications is because of the failure to meet its five-year supply."

Even on the face of it, Mr Wharton's comment is laughable - the idea that Stockton Council is solely to blame for approving the recent planning applications because it hasn't been approving enough planning applications is absurd and contradictory. Perhaps Mr Wharton can tell us which applications received were not eventually granted permission because, in nearly three years on the planning committee, I cannot recall a single one.

More seriously, whilst we do not know if it is ignorance of the detail of the Tories' NPPF (National Planning Policy Framework) that led to his remark, or whether it was a genuine Freudian slip, it was the NPPF which deliberately tied councils' hands when a five-year housing supply cannot be demonstrated.

Although councils have long had to publish a five-year housing target, it was only with the advent of the NPPF that a failure to meet these targets had any repercussions.

Paragraph 49 of the NPPF has been the absolute killer. It reads, "Housing applications should be considered in the context of the presumption of sustainable development. Relevant policies for the supply of housing should not be considered up-to-date if the local planning authority cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites."

In situations where parts of a planning authority's local plan are "absent, silent or relevant policies are out-of date", the NPPF takes precedence. This was a situation a majority of councils, including Stockton Council, found themselves in over a year after the NPPF came into effect.

As Alan Evans QC makes perfectly clear, it was the fact that the council's policies were 'out-of-date' which was the overriding factor in reaching the opinion he did.

So how about it Mr Wharton? Why don't you put aside your blind party loyalty, stop taking local residents for fools, and call on the government to immediately amend, or abandon, its catastrophic NPPF?

Planning Committee - Tall Trees, Yarm

My first planning committee earlier this week and a familiar name on the agenda - Tall Trees Hotel, Yarm.

As you will have seen in the press, planning permission was granted for the construction of 62 executive homes and 81 apartments on the land immediately adjacent to the hotel (much of which is currently parking).  The committee accepted that the benefits the linked renovation and expansion of the hotel would bring to the area outweighed the fact that the development was outside the limits of development.

Whilst some residents may have greeted this news with dismay, it is still far from certain however the approved development will ever take place.

The applicant states that the development of the hotel is reliant on the funds generated by the planned housing.  In accepting this argument the committee imposed a number of planning conditions to ensure that the development of the hotel and housing proceeds hand-in-hand.  In addition, contributions of £100,000 and £154,000 were demanded towards the costs of providing long-stay parking in Yarm and for providing a footpath and cycle lane from the site to Yarm Station respectively.

However, the applicant stated during the committee hearing that the conditions imposed designed to ensure the phased development of the site in fact serve to make the plans economically unviable.  With such stringent conditions imposed the applicant felt that he would not be able to proceed with the development and as a consequence, with the hotel like many others currently running at a substantial loss, he may have no option but to close the hotel.

This results in something of a quandry.  Whilst a substantial number of objections to the development were received, the thought of Tall Trees being closed is not a happy one.  A mothballed Tall Trees would almost certainly act as a magnet for vandals and rogues of all sorts, and could well end up becoming an unsightly blight on the edge of town.  You can bet your bottom dollar that it wouldn't then take much of an upturn in the market of the vultures to start circling and piecemeal plans for development of the site to be submitted.

It's well known that it is impossible to please all of the people all of the time, but I worry this situation could well deteriorate to the point of displeasing all of the people for a very long time to come.