Earlier this week, the second set of revised plans for proposed the Henley Hall solar farm were submitted by Kronos Solar. The changed layout was intended to assuage concerns expressed by Historic England and Shropshire Council’s heritage team about the impact of the scheme on the setting of Henley Hall and its gardens.
Historic England is still not satisfied that the changes have addressed its objections. In a letter to Shropshire Council’s planners yesterday, it said:
Whilst the proposed revision to the scheme will remove the area of the development directly from the registered park and the garden boundary is an improvement, having considered the response to our previous advice from the applicant’s heritage consultation, we wish to maintain our view with regard to the proposals.
Historic England repeats its earlier objection that the heritage assessment “does not contain a sufficient analysis of the [Henley Hall] assets’ setting and of the potential impact upon them.” It complains:
The application lacks visual montages or analysis of views from within the parkland and the listed structures which we would expect to demonstrate any potential impact (or lack of) that the proposals may have upon the designated heritage assets.
Saying the application should be rejected or deferred until heritage issues are resolved, Historic England says:
We do not agree with the applicant’s argument that the registered park and garden is deliberately detached from the working agricultural landscape beyond and therefore any development outside the park will not impact upon it.
Council officers have confirmed that in the light of this objection, they have pulled the solar farm application from the South Planning Committee’s meeting in July. The decision on planning permission had already been deferred from the committee’s June meeting.
What concerns me is that mere persistence will ultimately get he Developers their way on Planning Issues. This is because deliberately cash strapped Councils, like the one in Lancashire,eventually reach the point of ‘litigation’ and then have conflict of fiscal responsibility opposing the will of the majority of their electorate. Lancashire Council might well crumble against Quadrilla and open the door to the decimation of their county. Shropshire Planning, in your own words,eventually allowed the petrol station near the Corve ‘ because a legal challenge would be too expensive’
A change in the law making democratic decisions made after due appeal free from such litigation is needed, but of course will not happen as it was deliberately put in place when this Government tore up most of our planning laws and made it a Developers Charter.
I’ve never suggested that a legal challenge to the Bromfield Road petrol station was allowed ‘because a legal challenge would be too expensive’. If we had turned the application down we might have lost on appeal. But what we did was negotiate the best solution possible given planning laws don’t give us that many options.