Notes from the Green Belt: what’s so very special about Burley-in-Wharfedale?

Take a trip with me, friends (it’s an imaginary trip - the sun’s in the sky, we’re keeping socially distanced, and I’ll bring snacks) to the West Yorkshire hills, and in particular to the majestic slopes of the Wharfedale valley in the Yorkshire Dales. Where are we stopping for a sandwich? Burley-in-Wharfedale. Home of legendary ex-Countdown presenter Richard Whiteley. And also home, a bit more topically, of the latest Secretary of State decision which finds very special circumstances exist for developing hundreds of new homes in the Green Belt: here it is.

Hang on, you may be thinking. 500 new homes? In the Green Belt? When the Secretary of State had previously decided to refuse consent (see here), but that refusal had been quashed in the High Court with the Secretary of State’s agreement for inadequate reasons? And then he takes the decision again. But this time decides to grant permission? In the Green Belt? What on earth is going on?

Let’s start, as Julie Andrews used to say, at the very beginning:

1. The way Green Belt policy is mangled, mis-applied and misunderstood - particularly in the absence of a strategic framework for considering its function across local authority boundaries - makes it, for my money, the most powerful and retrogressive planning policy in England. You’ll be bored to tears by now of me saying that we really do need to have a frank, grown up conversation about the Green Belt’s purpose, its present and its future: see my mini-rant in the Financial Times here, my post about its relationship to the Housing Delivery Test here, and my post on why the Green Belt has stymied so many local plans from moving forward here.

2. To revise Green Belt boundaries through local plans, authorities need to show “exceptional circumstances”: see my explainer here.

3. But to get planning permission for most kinds of new building in the Green Belt outside of the plan-making process, the test is different. And it’s higher. Very special circumstances. Which will only exist if “the potential harm to the Green Belt by reason of inappropriateness, and any other harm resulting from the proposal, is clearly outweighed by other considerations”.

4. How often do chunky new applications for new housing meet the very special circumstances test? Well. Not often. Every year, at the Secretary of State / Planning Inspectorate level, there’s the odd decision here and there. A couple of years ago, there was a mini-flurry (e.g. here or here) of Inspector decisions allowing schemes to meet the needs of older people in the Green Belt, including those with an element of care. Outside those cases, normally what you see is housing acting as enabling development for something else, e.g. a school (see e.g. the 2018 decision allowing 258 homes linked to the replacement of the Howard of Effingham School in Surrey, or the 2020 decision in Cheadle Hulme allowing 325 homes in connection with a fantastic, state-of-the-art new special educational needs school). Or, you know, to support delivering a world-class golf facility that could host the Ryder Cup. Something exciting like that.

5. But hang about. How then do we make sense of a 2018 decision letter allowing a 175 home scheme in Nottinghamshire in the Green Belt, or an October 2019 decision letter in York granting permission for 266 homes in the Green Belt? When that’s it - just new homes. No school. No golf course. No care. Just good old-fashioned houses for people to live in. Then to mix things up a bit, in April 2020 the Secretary of State granted permission for 500 homes in the Green Belt on the old Oxford Brookes campus. Again, just houses. Not a Ryder Cup in sight. And then only last week, another 500 houses up in Burley-in-Wharfedale.

So what’s happening? Is this Government (gasp!) tearing up the Green Belt? Has the revolution come, friends, and we were so busy watching Oprah that we didn’t notice it?

Nope. The revolution isn’t upon us. Not yet.

Now, there is a bit of a trend afoot. But I think it’s a different, and slightly less headline-grabbing trend. It’s a trend which has nothing to do with tearing up the Green Belt. No. This trend links back to our favourite topic: the failure of the local plan process. Because here’s the point: what these examples of hundreds of homes in the Green Belt passing the very special circumstances test are really about is what happens when plans don’t move fast enough, or don’t move at all.

Exhibit A: Burley-in-Wharfedale. What actually happened there? Why was it such a strange tale?

I think the mission-critical points to understand are that:

1. The local planning authority was the City of Bradford MDC - and the Council supported the scheme. So that makes a bit of a change.

2. In particular, it was common ground between the applicant and the Council that the development could be accommodated within this part of the Green Belt whilst maintaining the integrity of the wider Green Belt and the purposes and functions of the Green Belt lying between Burley-in-Wharfedale and Ilkley. The Inspector agreed. This time (in a rather seismic shift from his 2019 refusal) the Secretary of State agreed too.

3. Plus, the Inspector’s reading of the adopted local plan was that: (a) exceptional circumstances had already been shown to release Green Belt land for housing, (b) 700 new homes should be brought forward at Burley-in-Wharfedale as a Local Growth Centre which will require a “significant contribution” from Green Belt land, and (c) the plan had been formulated specifically to incorporate the development of 500 of those dwellings and a new primary school on the application site.

4. The Council’s housing land supply was under 2 years, so the Secretary of State accepted that the delivery of new housing should attract “very substantial weight”.

5. Significant weight also for the primary school, for biodiversity net gain, and very significant weight for the heritage benefits of using a Roman Temporary Camp as an educational resource.

And that, folks, is how you show very special circumstances. But in the end, this is a story about a failure to plan. Because Bradford’s 2017 Core Strategy was supposed to be followed by a site allocations plan - which would and should have removed this Burley-in-Wharfedale site from the Green Belt and allocated it for 500 homes. Had that happened on time, then there’s no story. No inquiry. No drama. No blog post. Just a happily dull example of the system operating as intended.

As it is, we’re still waiting for Bradford’s site allocations plan. Which left the developer with little choice but to chance their arm through a planning application. And what a risk that turned out to be! The application, then a call-in by the Secretary of State, the delay and cost of a 6 day planning inquiry, a negative SoS decision, the costs of quashing that decision in the High Court, and getting there in the end, then yet another SoS decision. And finally… a consent.

So when we read between the lines, the real story of Burley-in-Wharfedale is not about the Green Belt being under threat. It’s a story about what happens when plan-making stops. But the needs to bring development forward keep on going.

And that’s the real trend. You start seeing it everywhere. Re-read that York decision. The appeal site had been identified as a proposed allocation for housing in the ever-emerging York plan (as you’ll remember, York hasn’t had a plan since 1954). Oxford Brookes? Well, South Oxfordshire had another one of those much-storied ever-emerging local plans (and the story of that plan still isn’t finished). Well, the Oxford Brookes site had been allocated in the plan (albeit for only 300 homes). What about Cheadle Hulme? Even there, the housing part of the site had been proposed for removal from the Green Belt and allocation for housing in the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework - another ever-emerging plan which has had a lengthy tale of ups and downs.

Plus - in most of the cases, due to the constraint of the Green Belt, the local authority’s housing land supply was dreadful - normally down around 2 years or even less.

So what’s the thread which links these cases? What do they really tell us about demonstrating very special circumstances? Here’s my thesis:

When a site is proposed for release from the Green Belt and allocation for housing through an emerging plan, but the plan has not yet been adopted, very special circumstances may be made out in circumstances where (a) the Council has a substantial housing shortage, and (b) the site fails substantially or entirely to contribute to Green Belt purposes.

Let’s be clear: there’s nothing plan-led about all of this. It’s the opposite of plan-led. These are examples of developers forced to rely on the very special circumstances test precisely because the plans have failed altogether, or are moving too slow. The real point is that serious needs - for housing, for infrastructure, for schools, industrial land, commercial buildings, retail, all of it - those needs don’t evaporate just because your plan has hit the skids. And some of these needs have to be met, and they have to be met now.

In the meantime, I hope you stay safe and well, #planoraks. And keep on planning.