Houghton Regis Industrial Units Development Turned Down on Appeal

• A planning application turned down by Central Bedfordshire Council,  has now been turned down by the Planning Inspectorate on appeal.

• The development proposed was the erection of 19 B2 industrial units with associated parking, access and landscaping and upgrading of public rights of way.
  
  

The application site was Land off Boscombe Road/Porz Avenue, Houghton Regis LU5 5UL. 

The site is broadly long and rectangular with a frontage onto the roundabout at Boscombe Road and Porz Avenue, running parallel with the adjacent estate road, Foster Avenue. A public footpath runs along the northeastern boundary of the site linking Dog Kennel Walk with Orchard Close and Boscombe Road, but it has suffered from overgrown bushes over the years making it sometimes impassable. Pylons go through the area. 

At one time the land was considered reserved land for a future bypass for Dunstable, on a route that might have gone along the bottom of Blows Down, through to Boscombe Road, across the Houghton Regis Chalk Pit, and onto the old A5.  

An appeal was made under section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 against a failure to give notice within the prescribed period of a decision on an application for planning permission.

The appeal was made by Option Two Development Limited against Central Bedfordshire Council.

The application Ref CB/20/00757/FULL, is dated 28 February 2020.

The Planning Inspectorate found against the application and subsequently turned it down. The Inspectorate concluded on 27 October 2022,

“Numerous harms have been identified, such as a loss of trees and part of a County Wildlife Site, but also in respect of a compromised highway design and lack of consideration of alternative sites. The environmental harms weigh against the scheme, bringing it in to conflict with Policy EMP3 (g), which along with the conflicts under EMP3 (b), brings the scheme into conflict with the Policy taken as a whole. Taken together, the totality of harms brings the scheme into conflict with the up-to-date development plan, taken as a whole.

“In terms of the public benefits of the scheme, I note that the scheme would deliver a range of smaller units in an area which would be well located for such and where there is extant demand. These factors, in addition to the potential 145 new jobs that would be created by the scheme, attract considerable weight in the overall planning balance. The economic input from the temporary construction phase also attracts a limited degree of additional weight.

”However, on balance, my finding is that the public benefits do not form a consideration of sufficient materiality to outweigh the identified harms and, thus, there is no reason to determine the proposal other than in accordance with the development plan.

“For the foregoing reasons, the appeal is dismissed and planning permission is refused.”

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