Land to the North West of Fiddington, Ashchurch near Tewkesbury, GL20 7BJ

up to 460 dwellings, a primary school, associated works, ancillary facilities and infrastructure, open space, recreation facilities and landscaping

Authority: Tewkesbury Borough Council
Appeal type: major · Planning Appeal
Procedure: Inquiry
Development: residential · Major dwellings
Inspector: Boniface M

Main issues, as the Inspector framed them

Whether the site is a suitable location for the proposed residential development, having regard to planning policy.

What decided it

The Council's inability to demonstrate a five-year housing land supply and the lack of a realistic plan-led remedy meant the very significant benefits of the housing-led scheme outweighed the limited weight given to conflict with the development plan's spatial strategy policies.

The benefits of the scheme, attracting very significant weight, overwhelmingly outweighed the limited harm from conflict with policies SP2 and SD10 and modest landscape and agricultural land impacts, so permission was granted under the tilted balance.

Plan policies cited: Policy SP1, Policy SP2, Policy SD10, Policy SD6, Policy SD11, Policy SD12, Policy REV1

Judgments cited: Tewkesbury Borough Council v SoS for Housing, Communities and Local Government [2021] EWHC 2782 (Admin)

Read the decision letter on the Inspectorate’s site

The main issues and the deciding factor are read from the published letter by Town Planner Pro; the letter itself is the record. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Research, not advice.

What an account adds

Draw a red line around your site and the appraisal follows.

Heritage. Listed buildings by grade and distance, conservation areas, scheduled monuments, registered parks and gardens, heritage at risk.
Landscape and environment. Green belt, national parks and national landscapes, SSSIs, ancient woodland, SPA, SAC and Ramsar sites, nutrient catchments.
Flooding. Flood zones 2 and 3, surface water, and both again with climate change.
Transport. The 800 metre station catchment and service frequency, bus stops with their weekday frequency, the cycle network, and the Framework’s transport tests measured for the site.

Then the development plan position, the housing land supply as an Inspector last accepted it, and every appeal decided around the site with its letter.

Every English appeal since 2016, with the letter behind it wherever the Inspectorate published one. Searched by meaning as well as by words, with the key case law counted live across the letters.

Casework that chases the deadlines. Applications, appeals and conditions with their statutory dates.

The judgement stays yours. The tool gathers the material and dates it.