Developer Waddeton Park Limited has lodged an appeal against Exeter City Council’s failure to determine the outcome of a planning application at St Bridget Nurseries in Old Rydon Lane.
It is the company’s second application to demolish and redevelop the 33 acre horticulture nursery and former garden centre located between Old Rydon Lane and Ikea.
An outline application for up to 350 dwellings on the site was approved by the city council planning committee in March last year, but was subsequently quashed at judicial review in February.
However Waddeton Park submitted a second, near-identical, application to build the same number of dwellings at the same site immediately after the application for judicial review of the previous decision was accepted, three months before the High Court judgement was handed down.
The city council, as local planning authority, is normally required to determine planning applications within eight weeks of their submission.
Ten months after the submission of its second application, with no decision in sight, Waddeton Park lodged an appeal with the planning inspectorate for non-determination.
An appeal hearing is expected in December.
St Bridget Nurseries highways proposals plan. Image: Stantec.
Exeter City Council’s previous approval for site redevelopment was quashed on two grounds.
Mrs Justice Lang found that Devon County Council had “failed to discharge its statutory duty” as local highway authority and that the developer’s transport assessment was “inadequate because it did not assess the effects of its access scheme on existing residents”.
Given that neither the county council nor the developer had provided the city council with the advice it needed, the judge found that the city council “ought to have discharged its Tameside duty to investigate the likely impacts” of the scheme on existing residents before making its decision.
As the council planning officer’s report “failed to grapple adequately, or at all” with these impacts, and “failed to give any or any adequate reasons as to why such impacts were acceptable”, the judge found that it was therefore “materially misleading by omission”.
Newcourt Masterplan figure showing St Bridget Nurseries site access. Image: Exeter City Council.
Mrs Justice Lang also observed that Newcourt Way and the Ikea roundabout, with its existing spur, had been designed at the request of both Exeter City Council and Devon County Council “specifically to accommodate the future traffic from allocated sites in the Newcourt area” as part of the area masterplan.
This meant that the north-east access to the St Bridget Nurseries site had already been identified and that the developer’s proposed alternative access arrangements via Old Rydon Lane “departed significantly from the masterplan’s access scheme”.
Consequently, the judge found that the council planning officer’s report had “not given proper regard” to the substance of the masterplan and had instead “dismissed” public consultation responses that were in favour of the masterplan’s access scheme.
The judicial review was jointly sought by Sandy Park Farm Partnership, a property and farming business based in Old Rydon Lane, and Christine Pratt, a resident who would have been directly affected by the resulting road layout.
Waddeton Park is involved in eight major Exeter development sites, most in peripheral greenfield locations, as well as several other similar sites in the area.
The company describes itself as a land promoter that specialises in securing planning permission on behalf of landowners, via options and interest-based agreements and by purchasing and leasing back land with development potential.
It cites a track record of obtaining permission at appeal and defending such permissions at judicial review.
