Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Birch, Lynch and Haque.

RESOLVED: That under the following items the members of the public listed below be granted leave to address the Committee:

N/2013/1035 & N/2013/1063:

Mr Malcolm Broce

Mr Murray Croft

Mr Nigel Maple-Toft

Mr Rod Sellers

Dr Chris Leads

Mr Robert Boulter

County Councillor Gonzalez de Savage.

There were none.

There were none.

(Copy herewith)

The Interim Head of Planning submitted a report and elaborated thereon. He explained that the purpose of this report was to advise Members further on the background to the decision to withdraw reasons 2 and 3 from the Council’s case at the forthcoming public inquiry into the Collingtree appeal.

It was noted that no decision was being sought by the Committee as the report was for noting. He reminded the Committee that reason 2 was:

“The highway mitigation measures proposed fail to demonstrate that this major development would not have a residual cumulative impact on the A45 trunk road and associated junctions including local highway network such that the cumulative impacts of the development would be severe.  These adverse highway impacts would lead to a detrimental impact on the wider Northampton highway network thereby adversely affecting the prospects for economic growth and regeneration in Northampton. The proposed development would therefore be contrary to the objectives of the National Planning Policy Framework and Policy C2 of the West Northamptonshire Joint Core Strategy”.

Reason 3 was:

“The proposed development would introduce unacceptable impact on residential and general amenity due to the increase in traffic on the local highway network contrary to the objectives of the National Planning Policy Framework and Policy S10 of the West Northamptonshire Joint Core Strategy”.

The Council had engaged leading Counsel and a team of independent consultants to defend the refusal of planning permission and to act as expert witnesses at the inquiry. Neither Northamptonshire County Council as Highway Authority nor Highways England (formerly the Highways Agency) responsible for trunk roads had objected to the planning application. It was therefore essential that the Council be able to field professionally qualified witnesses who were willing and able to present technical evidence to the inquiry. For Highways and Traffic evidence the Council engaged John Birch of the Glanville Group, the same consultant who appeared for the Council at the earlier Hardingstone appeal inquiry. For noise issues, it was noted that they had engaged Mike Brownstone of Resound Acoustics, a qualified and very experienced Acoustic Engineer.

Consistent with the inquiry rules and appeal best practice, the Council’s consultants had contacted the appellant’s team to identify areas of common ground and where possible, to resolve issues by further work. Shortly before the date set by the Planning Inspectorate for two sides to submit their Statements of Case, the appellant’s highways consultants, PBA sent a significant amount of additional traffic data to our consultant team. On the basis of this additional information and further traffic modelling by our team the Council’s highway and noise consultants concluded that they could no longer sustain a case based on the impact of the development on the local highway network as referred to in reasons 2 and 3 of the decision notice. Consequently, neither expert would be able to produce a Proof of Evidence in support of those two reasons for refusal or give evidence at the public inquiry.

Given these circumstances, the Council’s QC advised  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.