Developers lodge planning appeals for Skelmanthorpe and Scissett – but will uncertainty over LDF pave the way for open land building?

Two planning appeals will take place after councillors rejected a couple of housing developments.

Redrow Homes have appealed a rejection by Kirklees councillors for 26 homes on land at Strike Lane in Skelmanthorpe.

A public inquiry is set to take place on December 10 at Civic Centre 3 in Huddersfield town centre with the planning inspector due to rule on the councillors’ decision.

A second planning inquiry will get under way on January 27 in relation to Redrow Homes’ bid for 108 and 200 homes being refused for Pilling Lane in Scissett.

But the appeals will not be the first test of the uncertainty surrounding the Local Development Framework (LDF) – the council’s proposed planning policy until 2028 – which was withdrawn on the advice of the Planning Inspector and is being re-worked.

At a planning appeal this week relating to Redrow’s bid to build 54 homes on land off Ashbourne Drive in Cleckheaton, Kirklees Council offered no evidence and no cross examination took place at the appeal hearing.

Councillors will have to decide if the council should offer evidence in the two forthcoming appeals.

At the April meeting for the Strike Lane application, councillors on the Heavy Woollen Planning Sub-Committee rejected and criticised Redrow.

The land is classed as provisional open land (POL) – a planning policy that safeguards land until a local plan review proposes development.

Kirklees rejected the application as it was POL and said it is contrary to planning policy in the council’s Unitary Development Policy (UDP).

Appeal papers show Redrow will argue there are “no technical reasons for refusal”.

And they will argue that the UDP covered housing provision from 1993 to 2006 and the policy has expired.

Their appeal statement says: “Kirklees has failed to keep its plan up to date”.

Appeal documents for the Pilling Lane development have not been published.

In May, councillors rejected Redrow’s plans for 108 and 200 homes on land off Pilling Lane, Scissett.

It was refused due to the POL classification of the land and Kirklees argued the proposed development would be contrary to National Planning Policy Framework as it pre-empts any chance for people to shape their community in a planning policy – the Local Development Framework.