Maggie Stock, Chair of Warfield Village Action Group, responding to the article titled: ‘Plans for 33 homes refused: Councillor U-turn marks another twist in home saga’.

The ‘U-turn’ was not so much by the Councillors at the Planning Meeting on 11 February 2021, as by the Bracknell Forest Council Head of Planning in his recommending for approval - at the Meeting on 16 December 2019 and again at the Meeting on 11 February 2021 – the Herschel Grange Application for 33 dwellings, which was almost identical to an earlier Application on the same Site for 34 dwellings, which was refused on 1 May 2019 under the same Head of Planning, the main reason being its ‘harmful urbanising impact on the character and appearance of the countryside’.

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The procedural failing made by the Council, subsequently identified by lawyers, was the failure to fully inform the Planning Committee at the Meeting on 16 December 2019 of its reasons for refusal of the similar Application on the same Site earlier that year and the reasons for its U-turn in decision-making – from refusal to recommendation for approval. The consideration of an Application which was recommended for approval, yet breached Planning policy, was not easy for Councillors at that Meeting and made for considerable discussion, which ultimately resulted in a very tight approval vote: 6:5 (including both the Chairman and Vice-Chairman voting in favour).

Due to the procedural error at the Meeting on 16 December 2019, the approval decision had to be quashed and the Application reheard. The rehearing and redetermination of a Planning Application is virtually unheard of, if not unprecedented. It was eventually brought back to Committee at the recent Planning Meeting on 11 February 2021. Now fully informed, the Councillors were better able to assess the proposal presented to them by BFC Planning Officers and to uphold the Local Plan and local and national planning law and protect countryside to the north of Bracknell, which was neither designated for development, nor needed for housing due to the Council’s current healthy housing land supply and delivery. The majority of Planning Councillors (10:7) voted against an Application, which was not only contrary to Local Plan, but had a character, density and design, which would have a ‘harmful, urbanising impact on the character and appearance of the countryside’ and would be ‘unsympathetic to the character of the adjacent settlement’.

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Indeed, Councillors wondered why and how such an Application could ever have been recommended for approval.

Maggie Stock, Chair of Warfield Village Action Group