Rushcliffe Borough Council refuse plans for fourteen new homes in Flintham

Plans to build 14 homes in a village have been thrown out by a council.

The proposal, for a site on green land in Flintham, between Bingham and Newark, was brought before the Rushcliffe Borough Council’s planning committee at a meeting on Thursday, October 9.

An application for the site, on an orchard on the outskirts of the village, was first submitted in 2023. It was refused then and a subsequent appeal was turned down.

Landowner Mr G Dawson resubmitted plans in January this year. They detailed how the 14 affordable terraced properties would form a small residential cul-de-sac.

Also included in the proposals were plans for three bigger self-built homes on the same site. But it was noted by officers that the plans themselves had not changed since their first submission two years prior — instead, supporting material detailed changes to government planning policy.

The latest application received 31 public objections and a number of statutory consultee objections, including from the village parish council.

Documents prepared by council planners before Thursday’s meeting recommended the development for refusal. They noted that the applicant “had not demonstrated a local need existed to justify a rural exception site in Flintham.”

Other reasons for recommended refusal included the layout of the proposed development not considered to be in keeping with the village, the proposal not meeting planning guidance to ‘preserve and enhance’ the character or appearance of the site due to its location within a conservation area, and a bat survey requested by planners having not been completed by the applicant, meaning that impact on protected species could not be assessed.

At the meeting, agent Christopher Whitehouse, on behalf of Mr Dawson, argued that there is “clearly a need for genuinely affordable homes for sale and for rent to be delivered annually in the village in order to underpin need.”

He said: “Five separate housing needs surveys have been undertaken in this village across the previous 15-year-period by affordable housing operators.

“The identified need has been remarkably consistent across this period of time and there has been no development to satisfy this identified need.

“The council’s continued lack of support for this scheme and rural exception schemes in general is at odds with the evidence of what the government wants you to do. The scheme is clearly appropriate”

Speaking on behalf of objectors, a Mr Faulkner said “much heat and emotion” had been created by the latest application, generated by “broad, unsubstantiated notions of foul play” and “assertions of unevidenced need”.

He said: “The fundamentals remain that this is an historic orchard within and intrinsic to the conservation area, offering notable rural views across countryside and beyond.

“The blatantly urbanising effect of the proposals would erode, indeed destroy, the rural characteristics of the site.

“The updated report provided is not a housing needs survey. The only such survey was undertaken in early 2022 when only 27 of 255 questionnaires were returned. The lack of response indicates the lack of real support.”

He suggested better sites for a development, such as old offices in the village.

The application was refused by a majority vote.

Mr Whitehouse said Mr Dawson and his family would “inevitably” appeal again.