Aegon Site

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Thursday, March 20, 2008

The appeal against refusal of planning permission was decided in favour of the applicant after being decided by written representations away from Lytham, in Bristol. Kensington developments now have permission to build on the site, but as yet have made no move to start construction.

The history of the application is shown below.

We need to remain vigilant to ensure that any development on the site remains within the limits set by the permission that was granted.

In October 2005 an application from Kensington Developments was considered by the DCC

The application was opposed by Defend Lytham and public reaction was so great that the meeting of the Development Control Committee had to be held in Lowther pavilion to accommodate the number of local residents who wished to attend. Philip Woodward, the Deputy Chief Executive of Fylde Borough, told Radio Lancashire this was the biggest meeting held in Fylde Borough in the last 100 years.

A PDF copy of Defend Lytham’s letter of objection can be found here

In the event the application was refused by the D.C.C. on the following grounds

In simple terms we would interpret this to mean

The scale of the development is too big compared to its surroundings
There are already too many houses in Lytham and no more are needed until after 2015.
There is a need to protect existing employment land to bring more jobs to Lytham.
The “affordable housing” proposed is not really affordable in the council’s own terms and the developer is trying to “work” the planning system by describing it as such.

In spite of the incontrovertible nature of the grounds for refusal, Kensington have now launched an appeal. The following notice appeared in the LSE of 24th May 2006.

We would like to thank all residents who wrote in before the deadline. It appears that the Inspectorate were very surprised by the volume of correspondence received.

A PDF copy of Defend Lytham’s letter of objection to the appeal can be found here

In spite of this, the lack of support from Fylde Council along with representations from Kensington Developments mean that the appeal was not be held in public.

Kensington, who have not been on record as saying much of late, stated in their planning consultant’s letter to the Planning Inspectorate dated June 16 2006 that “there was no major public objection to the site” when it came before the DCC last year. They state that the only objectors to this scheme of all the 100s who turned out were “neighbouring residents close to the site”.

Kensington’s consultant’s major concern is not so much for the integrity of the appeal procedure, but the fact that “to move from the speed of the written procedure to a hearing or enquiry would be ...commercially damaging to the company”. They are also very keen to stress their view that “the appeal procedure should not be influenced by third parties” (presumably because third parties such as Defend Lytham and other local residents might make life difficult for them)

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