A planning inspector has dismissed an appeal for a development of six detached five-bedroom residential dwellings on a brownfield site in Redhills. The site was previously a scrapyard, known as Newbery Car Breakers, whose owner was given a suspended prison sentence in 2018 for operating an illegal vehicle dismantling business there.
An application for full planning permission to redevelop the site was submitted by a subsequent owner in May 2022.
The city council planning committee considered the application in April last year but deferred its decision to its June meeting to allow officers time to formulate its refusal reasons. These centred on highways safety as a result of the scrapyard’s location in a rural lane, without pedestrian footpaths and bordered by deep hedgerows, on the city’s outskirts near Nadderwater.
However, before the June meeting took place the applicant submitted an appeal against the council’s failure to determine the application within the statutory time limit. A planning inspector dismissed the appeal earlier this month.
Illustrative elevation of development proposals. Image: Squirrel Design.
Devon County Council’s response to the site redevelopment application, as local highways authority, only ran to a single, 100-word paragraph. It saw no reason to object.
It mentioned an outline planning permission for an adjacent site that had been granted at appeal in February 2022, which includes a condition requiring the provision of a pedestrian footway to which the scrapyard development might expect to connect.
However it failed to acknowledge that it had recommended refusal of the adjacent site application on the grounds it is “an unsustainable location with inadequate access to pedestrian and cycling facilities and very limited access to public transport” which makes it likely to “become car-dependent with limited opportunities to travel by sustainable means”.
It also mentioned its response to a previous planning application for the scrapyard site, for which outline planning permission was granted in July 2018 shortly after the scrapyard owner was sentenced, but then lapsed three years later.
It said that as that response had been that it “would not need a footway due to the low numbers of pedestrian movements that it would likely generate”, and the new application was “for one more dwelling” than before, it “would not likely increase the pedestrian movements significantly more in order for the highway authority to raise an objection”.
However its response to the previous application was also for a development of six, not five, detached dwellings. It said: “Given the application is on a brownfield site (a scrapyard), the level of additional traffic generation from the site is expected to be modest and the additional traffic generated is not a significant concern.”
No explanation was offered as to why the vehicle movements related to a scrapyard might provide a guide to those resulting from a housing development providing 24 off-road car-parking spaces.
Illustrative plan of development proposals. Image: Squirrel Design.
The city council planning officer’s report on the scrapyard application echoed the county council’s lack of concern about the lack of a pedestrian footpath. It also cited the outline permission on the adjacent site and repeated the claim that the impact on local roads would be insignificant, again citing the site’s “previous use as a breaker’s yard”.
Committee members saw the situation differently at the planning committee meeting which heard the application, which a county council highways officer did not attend even though it took place at County Hall.
They criticised the application’s failure both to provide safe pedestrian and cyclist access to the site and to promote sustainable transport modes. They said the resulting car-dependent development would produce an unacceptable risk of conflict between road users, harming highways safety.
The planning inspector agreed with the councillors, whose refusal reasons were confirmed at the planning committee’s June meeting after the appeal had been lodged.
Rural lane in Redhills beside former vehicle breakers yard. Image: Exeter City Council.
The inspector said, disagreeing with the county council, that the scrapyard is “an unsuitable location for new residential development” when access to sustainable modes of transport and highway safety are considered, and that the proposed development would conflict with several Exeter Local Plan policies.
They said there had been “numerous vehicles moving in both directions” past the site entrance during their visit in February, and that steep banks on both sides of the road precluded both pedestrians getting out of the way of passing vehicles and vehicles safely passing pedestrians.
They added: “A pedestrian walking in the road for this relatively short distance, particularly when it is dark, poses a substantial danger to themselves and drivers” and so a “significant risk to highway safety”.
The inspector also concluded that the development proposals failed to promote sustainable transport modes, including access to public transport, instead of private motor vehicle use.
They added that there was no guarantee that the pedestrian footpath required as a condition of the outline permission for the adjacent site would be delivered as the reserved matters application that would address all remaining aspects of that development had not then come forward.
The appeal decision follows a judicial review of a city council planning decision at St Bridget Nurseries in Old Rydon Lane in which the judge found that Devon County Council had “failed to discharge its statutory duty” as local highway authority.
