Update on Lanpro and Glavenhill

Lanpro’s proposal for the development of land west of North Street was circulated to local residents in early March. The document must have taken some time to prepare, perhaps a month or more, given the need to get the text approved by all the parties involved. Thus we may speculate that the landowner approached Lanpro, or was approached by them, no later than January, at which time the Bank of England base rate stood at 3.5%. Since then of course it has increased to 5.25%.

Despite optimistic noises being emitted by the UK press, there is no reason to believe that interest rates will go down in the near future. Indeed, we are as likely as not to find ourselves soon in a serious recession, if not an actual depression.

It is impossible to be sure of the size of the derivatives market, but it is far bigger now than it was just before the crash of 2008. If it implodes again – and the auguries suggest that it not only might, but eventually must – there is, this time, not enough capacity for governments to be able to bail out the culprits. There are simply too few productive taxpayers to mulct. The result will be widespread failure in the Western financial system, putting an end to speculative ventures such as building new housing estates.

Nor must we ignore geopolitical realities. The West is in long-term decline. The U.S. has not won a war since Desert Storm in 1991, and that was conducted using overwhelming firepower against a weak adversary. Its current proxy war in Ukraine, which, following decades of NATO expansion eastwards, it initiated in 2014 with the Maidan coup, is going so badly that our compliant media have all but ceased reporting it. The horrors unfolding in Gaza have caused an unprecedented unification of the Islamic world, to the extent that President Erdoğan – and Türkiye is a member of NATO – has been outspoken in his condemnation. Saudi Arabia is now accepting payment for oil in rubles: the petrodollar is on its last legs. Countries outside the West are de-dollarising. It is the USD as reserve currency that has been supporting the American empire and Western hegemony as a whole.

The sanctions against Russia have been an unmitigated disaster. The Russian economy is booming, while Europe is being so starved of cheap oil and gas that Germany is being forced to de-industrialise. Germany is, or was, the economic powerhouse of the EU. It does not take a genius to see what is going to happen to that institution now that Germany can no longer foot the bills. Despite Brexit, British and EU interests are still closely entwined, as indeed are British and American interests.

The illegal seizure of Russian sovereign and private assets by the U.S. and British governments has prompted other governments to start repatriating their own funds, since they no longer trust us. Indeed, the world, that is to say, 85% of its population, is realigning itself to the exclusion of the collective West. It is being led by the BRICS countries – particularly China and Russia, a process now being accelerated by events in the Middle East.

One could go on, for there is much more in this vein, but you can see that the future of the British economy does not look good. Then we have the almost certain probability of an incoming Labour government, which is unlikely to be sympathetic to property developers. Mr Sunak may delay the election till the autumn of next year, but as far as we are aware Glavenhill have not yet even submitted a pre-planning application. A full planning application for such a sensitive site will take many months of negotiation and to-and-fro before it can even be considered by the councillors on the NNDC Planning Committee.

As developers go, Glavenhill is a minnow. It has a total of three employees and a single director. To quote its own reporting to the government:

The company operates on a portfolio basis for land promotional activities and some of the projects complete whilst others do not. Costs incurred with the projects that do not obtain planning permission and do not complete are written off once planning has been rejected. The company’s shareholders, directors and other investors support the company until funds from successful completed transactions are repatriated to the company.

Its modus operandi, then, is to fly kites and see which of them find a favourable wind. The outlay so far has apparently been limited to the proposal document and the presentation in the Village Hall that followed it.

A 2019 pre-planning application for the same site was vehemently rejected by the NNDC, and that was for fewer dwellings than Lanpro propose. It is quite possible that this is one kite that Glavenhill will not even attempt to launch, given the economic forecast and the expense of a full planning application.

This blog was started, and the Langham Action Committee convened, in response to what looked at the time like an urgent need to counter Lanpro’s proposal. That need has become less urgent. The feature articles were introduced to keep the blog current in people’s mind, but it would seem that the time-consuming work of compiling them is no longer necessary, and from now on such posts as appear will mostly relate to planning matters.

Of course there is no guarantee that Lanpro and Glavenhill have given up, despite all indications to the contrary. If they do submit an application, we shall have only 21 days in which to respond, so if you have not already done so we urge you to subscribe by email, using the gadget in the sidebar. 

Thank you for your attention so far, and if anything transpires we will try to get the news to you as quickly as possible.

An account of the Parish Council meeting, 5 September

The meeting was attended by Sarah Bütikofer, NNDC Councillor for Priory Ward.

Till now Langham Parish Council has been under strength, with five councillors; item 4 on the agenda was the co-option of two new members, James Priest and Louise Goodenough. James Priest was co-opted without objection, whereas the co-option of Louise Goodenough was opposed by Cllr Alan Smith, and Cllr Patrick Allen abstained.

Cllr Allen, during the reception of declarations of interest (item 2), confirmed that he owns the land concerned in the proposal to build on the site west of North Street. Louise Goodenough is the Chair of the Langham Action Committee.

Item 8 concerned the village survey about the development. On this occasion, in accordance not only with the provisions of the Localism Act but the Local Government Association’s code of conduct for councillors, Cllr Allen recused himself from the discussion by leaving the room for its duration. Cllr Walker summarised the survey responses, noting that the majority of respondents had concerns about and objections to the proposal.

Although no formal motion was carried about the Parish Council’s attitude to the proposal in light of these findings, we must assume that, as a body, it will oppose any application for planning permission for this development that may be made.

Parish Council meeting, 5 September

Just a reminder that the Parish Council is due to meet at the Parish Room next Tuesday, 5 September, at 7.00 pm. As of today the agenda has not been published on the PC website, but we expect the survey results to be discussed and to learn what position the Council has taken regarding the Lanpro proposal.

The Parish Council Poll

Langham Parish Council has published the results of its survey to gauge opinion about the proposed development on land to the west of North Street.

There are 308 people on the Register of Electors, though anyone could respond. 147 responses were submitted. Respondents could choose one of four answers to each question, varying from (1) ‘I support this’ to (4) ‘I do not support this’.

The questions asked are in some cases so worded as to be ambiguous, and nearly ten per cent of respondents expressed difficulty here. Nonetheless the results give some idea of the sentiment in the village. If we group together responses (1) and (2) as fully or generally supportive, and responses (3) and (4) as generally or fully against the proposal, we get the following result:

For: 202; against: 784. Thus by a factor of almost 4 to 1, opinion in the village is against the proposed development.

House prices in Langham

Nothing could be more illustrative of the stratospheric rise in Langham house prices than a brief history of the St Mary’s estate, presented here in the form of newspaper cuttings.

 

1972

(The hutment being the barracks for RAF Langham. Frederick Budd Ryder was the owner of Langham Hall Farm.)

13.8.76

12.11.76

(St Andrew’s Drift trends eastwards, away from Langham St Mary’s and deeper into Langham St Andrew’s.)

14.3.77

1983

1983

A house in Binham Road that when first sold (in 1977) might have gone for no more than £20,000 is now being offered for sale at £595,000 – a nearly thirtyfold increase in 46 years.

According to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, £20,000 in 1977 had the same general purchasing power as £111,840 today. If sold for the asking price, the house in Binham Road will have outstripped general inflation by a factor of 5.32.

The causes of the increase are various. They include:

Demographics. Mass immigration was actively encouraged by the Blair government and has continued ever since. The official population of the UK now stands at nearly 68 million; in 1970 it was no more than 56 million. Unofficial estimates suggest the true figure may be as high as 80 million – and that figure was quoted in 2007. Given the volume of both legal and illegal net immigration since then, no one knows what the true number is today.

House prices in north Norfolk have been increased by an influx of wealthy retirees, many from London and the south of England, where prices are of course even higher than they are here. A one-bedroomed flat in Chelsea is currently on offer for £595,000, the same price as that three-bedroomed detached house in Binham Road. Even in outer London and into the adjoining shires, a relatively modest family home can cost well in excess of £1 million. Someone moving here from the south is liable to offer the full asking price, or even exceed it, to secure the property they have fallen in love with.

Remote working has also enabled city-dwellers to move to the countryside. The improved road links between here and London, besides the regular rail service from Sheringham to Norwich and thence Liverpool Street, make feasible an occasional visit to a London head office; and Norwich Airport is not so very far away.

Fractional reserve banking. This is the process whereby money is created by issuing debt. Except for banknotes and coins, which are produced by the government, the money in circulation has been and continues to be created by the banks. The fraction of deposits to be held in reserve is typically mandated by regulators at 10%, but can go as low as 2% or, in some cases, zero. Thus if one deposits £100 in one’s bank account, the bank is typically authorised to lend £90 of it right away to someone else. When the £90 finds it way back into that or another bank, a further £81 can be loaned. It is usually rather more complicated than that, but you can see that fractional reserve banking is inherently inflationary.

Rather than issuing its own money, which it could, the government borrows. Public spending usually exceeds the tax-take, creating a budget deficit known as the Public Sector Net Cash Requirement. Each annual PSNCR adds to the National Debt, which is the total quantity of money borrowed by the British Government at any one time through the issue of securities, whether by the Treasury or other government agencies. About two-thirds of these securities are held by insurance companies and pension funds. Interest is due every six months and is reflected in the taxes we pay.

Taxation increases the cost of goods and services to which it is applied, and because the tax burden has been steadily increasing this also causes inflation. The National Debt now surpasses £1 trillion. Factoring in all liabilities including state and public sector pensions, the real national debt is closer to £4.8 trillion, some £78,000 for every person in the UK, assuming the official figure for the population. At present the National Debt is growing by over £5,000 a second.

Regulation of the rental market. Top-down interference in any market usually leads to dysfunction, of which inflation is a common symptom. However, when it comes to dealing with the minority of landlords who prove to be unscrupulous, regulation is absolutely necessary. A consequence is that not a few would-be landlords decline to enter the market at all, limiting the supply and thereby keeping the cost of renting higher than it would otherwise have been. Recent changes in the rules concerning allowable expenses for buy-to-let landlords have driven many of them to sell up, which has (a) caused rents to rise and (b) increased the number of houses for sale and therefore had a dampening effect on prices.

High rents make home-ownership more desirable, putting pressure on house-prices, cancelling out (b), so the overall effect of government regulation of the rental market is an increase in the cost of renting, which in turn puts further pressure on house-prices.

Planning constraints. Unless the whole country is to be built over and its heritage and livability trashed, there must be constraints on the number of new houses, as here in Langham. Lanpro’s proposed scheme would irreversibly change the character of the village and have a deleterious effect on the quality of life here. Constraints in any market lead to scarcity and hence higher prices.

Artificially low interest rates. This is the big one, and a prime cause of the steep rise in the cost of housing in Britain since 2008. We need not look in too much detail at the 2008 financial crash, though we should remember that, rather than allowing the culprits to fail, the Brown government bailed them out with taxpayers’ money, thereby increasing the public debt.

Since the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694, the base rate has averaged about 5%. After the 2008 crash the BoE and other Western central banks, such as the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve in Washington, instituted a policy of suppressing base rates. The idea was to stimulate the economies left moribund by the banking crisis. The result was cheap money, issued to some extent at the expense of savers, who for the past fifteen years have seen the value of their savings depleted by rates that fell, and indeed still fall, far short of the level of inflation.

This abundance of cheap money led directly to accelerated inflation in the housing market, where buyers must outbid each other. The result, now that interest rates are returning to the norm, is a mounting disaster for the unfortunates who had no choice but to borrow exorbitant sums if they wanted to get on the property ladder. The alternative, renting, merely sees money going out of the window, never to return.

When these people’s current mortgage deals expire, they will have to renew. Already there are stories of households facing an unaffordable trebling of their mortgage payments.

This is the result of failure to address the structural weaknesses revealed in 2008. Policymakers have simply kicked the can down the road while the problems have been mounting, and it would appear that things are coming to a head. It will be impossible to evict so many defaulting mortgagees; and even if they are evicted, where are they expected to live?

Implications for the Lanpro proposal

Cheap money has been good for developers. A return to higher rates will obviously make financing the scheme more expensive. The price of building materials has also skyrocketed, thanks in part to the backfiring of sanctions against Russia. There is an acute shortage of skilled tradesmen, exacerbated by Brexit and the return to eastern Europe of so many bricklayers, electricians, and the rest.

House prices are beginning to fall, and if there are wholesale repossessions they will fall more steeply still, making any new housing development less profitable. The NNDC is likely to insist that a third or more of the houses will be classified as affordable homes, which require funding ultimately or directly from the government. Whether the funds available will be as plentiful as they have been hitherto is debatable, again given the rise in interest rates.

In all, it would appear that events in the wider world are militating against the success of the scheme, were it to be approved, which is in itself highly unlikely, given that the 2019 application, positing a larger number of dwellings, was so roundly rejected at the pre-planning stage.

Many thanks to Edward Allen for the newspaper cuttings – what may seem to many of us like something to line the budgie’s cage with is, in the right hands, a valuable historical resource.

The Parish Council questionnaire

The Parish Council has told us that it is about to distribute a questionnaire to find out what residents think about the proposal to build 35 houses on land west of North Street.

You can simply say you are for or against the proposal, or qualify your approval of it if certain conditions are met.

There are five basic reasons to be in favour of the proposal.

1. It will enrich the landowner involved, who is coincidentally the Vice Chair of the Parish Council;

2. It will enrich the developers;

3. It will provide employment for construction workers for the 18-24 months during which the site is being landscaped and the houses put up;

4. It will increase the population of the village, currently about 350, by some 50-100 souls;

5. It may provide some measure of affordable housing in Langham.

If you broadly approve of the scheme but have reservations, the questionnaire offers the following options:

1. You need reassurance about safe entry to and exit from the development;

2. You would like to see a reduction in the number of houses proposed or a guarantee that the number would not increase from 35;

3. You would like a proportion of the homes to be affordable;

4. You would like to see ‘legal protection to ensure that the homes cannot be used as second or holiday homes (if we think this could be possible)’;

5. You have other concerns.

Safe entry to and exit from the development

Access to the site must be made either from North Street or Binham Road. In either event, most of this extra traffic will use the crossroads by the church. The line of sight when emerging there from North Street is bad enough, but coming the other way, from Field Dalling Road, it is positively dangerous: so dangerous in fact that drivers must nose forward into Binham Road in order to see what’s coming.

An exit into Binham Road would also be dangerous, given the way the road curves, even if the existing and historic (it was once the village school) Parish Room were to be demolished; Lanpro have mooted providing a new village hall.

Prompted by a previous planning application for the same piece of land, the Highways Department at Norfolk County Council voiced grave concerns about the implications for road safety.

They also commented that the village is in need of more footways. Walking east from the Cockthorpe road, one can follow for a while the safe footway provided during construction of the St Mary’s estate, but at Astley Cottage this runs out and one must cross the road, again with a poor line of sight, to a narrow footway which becomes even narrower when approaching the crossroads. Having crossed over and with the church on one’s right, this narrow footway soon ends. After that, almost all the way to the Blakeney road, one must walk in the carriageway – which is often obstructed by parked vehicles.

Most of the length of North Street is served by a safe footway on its east side, but in Field Dalling Road there is no footway at all.

Fewer houses

Reduction in the number of homes below a certain point, particularly if some of them are to be designated as affordable, may make any development uneconomic. Developers fiercely resist such a reduction. However, it is possible that the figure of 35 dwellings has been put forward with the intention of appearing to compromise later by settling for fewer, a suspicion given credence by the fact that the number proposed in 2019 was only 27, four of which were to have been flats.

Affordable homes

The definition of ‘affordable’ is elastic and is discussed in this BBC article from 2016. In rough terms, an affordable home is sold at something like 80% of the market value. Developers may be required by district councils to include a number of such properties in their plans, but of course each one reduces the profitability of the development, so there is much negotiation about this before full planning consent is given.

Assuming that the new market-rate houses proposed for Langham are comparable to those on the St Mary’s estate, albeit with much smaller gardens, the affordable homes would cost something in the region of £400,000.

Using the basic mortgage calculator found here, and assuming the purchasers can supply a £50,000 deposit, and assuming the current mortgage rate of 4.5%, they will need to find £1945 a month to service a £350,000 repayment mortgage. Over the full term they will pay £583,398, which includes interest of £233,398. These are of course approximate figures. The historic bank rate since the seventeenth century has been about 5%. Given the current rate of inflation, we could soon see it go considerably higher than that.

Restrictions on occupation

In its questionnaire the Parish Council itself expresses doubt as to whether covenants restricting the occupation of these houses will be enforceable, a doubt we can only endorse. In any case, such covenants would reduce the value of the houses and make the whole scheme less financially viable.

In legal circles it is known that restrictive covenants can be and are breached all the time. If such breaches remain uncontested at law, the covenants eventually become null and void.

As to the designation of a country property as a second home, it is common practice for someone living in, say, London to designate the London house as the second home and the country property as the primary residence, neatly circumventing whatever impositions a local authority seeks to make.

Other concerns

These are many and various. The scheme if built would run a coach and horses through numerous NNDC core strategy policies, especially concerning development in the countryside and in ‘small growth villages’, of which Langham is a prime example.

If you want to look these policies up on the NNDC website, they are as follows:

SS 1: Spatial Strategy for North Norfolk

SS 2: Development in the Countryside

SS 4: Environment

SS 6: Access and Infrastructure

HO 1: Dwelling Mix and Type

HO 2: Provision of Affordable Housing

HO 3: Affordable Housing in the Countryside

EN 1: Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the Broads (PDF)

EN 2: Protection and Enhancement of Landscape and Settlement Character

EN 8: Protecting and Enhancing the Historic Environment

EN 9: Biodiversity & Geology

EN 10: Development and Flood Risk

CT 1: Open Space Designations

CT 5: The Transport Impact of New Development

CT 6: Parking Provision

In brief, this is a greenfield site lying within both the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the Langham Conservation Area. Building over it will irreversibly change the character of the village and put unwonted pressure on local infrastructure, especially the road system.

For these reasons alone the proposal is highly unsuitable and, we submit, without merit.

The site

Image credit: Gaynor Pannier

Comment by Roger Woodburn

Mr Woodburn has just contributed this comment to the post What is Proposed, but we feel it merits a post of its own – Ed.

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Set out below is the gist of the comments I sent to LANPRO after their ‘presentation’ at the Parish Room. The recent meeting did very little indeed to allay or answer my concerns.

I have a large number of concerns about this proposal in terms of (i) the underlying motives for proposing it, (ii) the justification / alleged benefits for the village and (iii) the details so far provided by you.

The proposed site is a greenfield site and what is more it is good agricultural land. This flies in the face of the UK’s need to increase its own food production, reduce imports and their associated carbon footprints.

The main beneficiaries will be the land’s vendor and the site’s ‘developer’, not the village.

Langham is described by you as a strong community; this is self-evidently not the case. The village pub closed through lack of support, likewise the previous shop (Wizard’s End Stores). There are significant numbers of properties that lie empty for long periods during the year - three in our road (St Andrew’s Drift ) alone. Attendance at village events such as quizzes, coffee mornings, and the Street Fayre is low. It should be clearly noted that during the development of the original Langham Glass site the community was assured that a village shop would form part of the development; nothing came of the assurance. It would require an absolute guarantee for the latest proposed shop to be opened and sustained for several years for the proposal to have any credibility.

The expression ‘well designed low density layout’ is used by you about the housing density. By no stretch of the imagination can the proposed density be described as low in the context of this village. It is roughly three times that of the current residences in the surrounding area.

In order to attract young families to the area requires employment opportunities. There are extremely few opportunities locally that would pay employees at a rate that would enable them to obtain and service a mortgage for an ‘affordable’ home. Your mention of the Harper and Langham Hall implies low skill work in the hospitality business, or in the shops and services you mention in Blakeney, Holt and Wells. Your use of the expressions ‘notable proportion’ and ‘majority proportion’ in relation to the proposed houses mean very little indeed and provide a way out of any serious commitment.

The protection you propose for ensuring that the houses are not used as second homes is laudable but very likely unenforceable as the Government is committed to scrapping s.106 agreements of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and nothing yet has been proposed in its place.

The ground plan shown at the public presentation appeared to be inaccurate as it does not show the narrow loke that runs up from the west end of Marryat’s Loke to join the path at the end of St Andrew’s Drift. The path to and from the development and St. Andrew’s Drift is not shown clearly.

The access arrangements proposed for both the Binham Road and North Street would render the already narrow roads more dangerous. The public parking areas will likely be used by The Harper’s staff and residents’ second cars.

The biodiversity area shown on the draft layout in dark green on the north side is so small as to be essentially worthless as it is surrounded on three sides by buildings with no wildlife corridor by which many species could arrive. (The expression ‘ecological area’ which you use is scientifically meaningless.)

An account of the Parish Council meeting on 9 May

A large and perhaps unprecedented gathering of parishioners, numbering at least 60, crowded the Village Hall on Tuesday night to listen to the proceedings of the Parish Council. The item on the agenda that brought the majority of them there was the proposal put forward by Lanpro to build 35 houses on land at the NW corner of Binham Road and North Street. The Vice Chairman of the Parish Council, Mr Patrick Allen, has a pecuniary interest in this proposal. He was present at the meeting.

Instead of recusing himself as the law requires, and instead of leaving the room as the Local Government Association code of conduct recommends, Mr Allen remained seated when this matter came before the Council. He claimed that, since no formal application has been put before the planners at NNDC, he was not required to absent himself from the discussion.

Indeed he took a vocal and defensive part in it. As for the others on the Council, the Chairman expressed half-hearted approval of the proposal, while the others, bar Anne-Marie Coe, expressed no cogent opinion at all. Ms Coe acknowledged the situation and suggested further discussion with parishioners about this matter prior to any future planning application, and her statements are much appreciated.

The audience politely articulated their concerns and their need to be heard by the Parish Council. When asked whether, as representatives of the village, the councillors ought to have a collective view on the issue as it stands, they disagreed, again saying that the proposal is merely that and not yet a formal planning matter.

Mr Allen was met with hoots of derisive laughter when, challenged about the utility of imposing covenants of one sort or another on the developers, he loudly declared, ‘I’m in charge!’

All this contrasted bizarrely with the previous proceedings of the Council, detailing the minutiae of parochial affairs such as cutting back unruly hedges or replacing the defibrillator, or accounting, to the last penny, the parish’s assets, income and expenditures.

By the date of its next meeting a pre-planning application may have been submitted. We shall no doubt all attend that meeting too, in order to ascertain whether our own parish council has managed to form a view about one of the largest single developments ever proposed for Langham.

The planning process

A proposal like the one published by Lanpro can be worrying, but it is important to keep a level head. The stress is made worse by uncertainty and lack of knowledge. Stress about a housing proposal is greatly eased by an understanding of the process whereby a housing development gets the go-ahead from the authorities.

This process can be protracted, and we emphasise straight away that the Binham Road/North Street scheme is at its earliest and most tenuous stage.

The landowner and the developer

Obviously, before any sort of housing scheme can go forward, the developer either has to own the land or have a legal agreement with the present landowner. Such an agreement is likely to commit the landowner to selling to the developer if full planning permission is granted; by then the price per acre will have increased manyfold.

Someone seeking to maximise the price of his or her land might approach a property developer directly. Alternatively he or she might approach a planning consultancy. A planning consultancy, among other activities, will work on behalf of developers. The planning consultancy in our present case is Lanpro, which seems to have a close relationship with Glavenhill (or GlavenHill; both forms appear on its website), the putative developer. Quite often, especially in urban and suburban settings, it can work the other way round – a planning consultancy or developer might identify a possible site on the map and approach the landowner.

Once these relationships are in place, the next step is to produce an impression of what the development might look like. This is the stage we are at now with the proposal published by Lanpro earlier in the year. Clearly they perceive difficulty ahead, which is why they went to the trouble of mailing a glossy A3 brochure to nearby residents, lauding the purported benefits of the scheme; on 7 March they also set up an exhibition in the Village Hall. The purpose of such moves is generally to minimise the level of opposition to be encountered were a formal application to be put forward. Lanpro themselves claim, ‘We are committed to working with local people, to fully understand the opportunity at Langham and to gauge the support that is likely to be forthcoming for our emerging proposals.’

Planning permission

Legislation enshrined in the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 requires any new development to be granted planning permission. As defined, ‘development’ refers to various enterprises, such as quarrying or engineering projects, change of use (e.g. from residential to commercial use), and putting up buildings.

Some forms of minor development, like maintenance of an existing building (say, renewing the windows in a house which is neither listed nor in a conservation area), are defined as ‘permitted development’ and do not need planning permission.

If planning permission is required it must be sought in the first instance from the local planning authority, which in our case is North Norfolk District Council.

It is not necessary for an applicant to own the land. The applicant will apply either for full planning permission straight away (very unlikely in such a sensitive case as this) or for outline planning permission, which if granted essentially says the local authority finds the proposal broadly acceptable.

The next step is an application for so-called ‘reserved matters’. This provides more detail than the outline planning application, and includes things like the exact size, appearance and status of the buildings, landscaping, and the provision of access roads and other public amenities. There is likely to be negotiation at this stage between the applicant and the local authority.

Once the reserved matters application has been approved, full planning permission can follow. Sometimes a ‘hybrid’ application is made, for outline planning permission for some parts of the scheme but full planning permission for the rest.

If planning permission is granted in full, that does not necessarily mean a scheme will proceed: the landowner may sell the site to another, or decide not to build for the present because of the economic climate. Planning permission is often time-limited and must be renewed. In some circumstances it can also be varied. Sooner or later, though, an approved scheme in one form or another will probably go ahead.

Opposition

If a local authority deems an application unsuitable it will be rejected. Strict policies for new housing are in place, whether drawn up by a district or county council or central government. Even if the application satisfies the requirements of these policies, it yet may be rejected for various reasons, such as concerns about road safety or the capacity of local infrastructure.

At bottom a district council is a political construct and is beholden to the electorate for its powers. Besides deciding whether an application conforms with official policies, it must take into account the views of interested parties, such as local residents.

It is the planning officers who receive planning applications. If these are minor they may be approved without being referred to the councillors on the planning committee. If, however, an application is controversial, it takes on a definite political colour and will certainly be referred to the planning committee for a decision.

Should the vote be negative, the applicant may appeal it; the government body concerned is the Planning Inspectorate. An inspector will review all the paperwork and make a site visit, after which he or she will give his or her verdict, which is binding.

What’s next?

When a planning application is made there is a statutory period of 21 days in which comments can be submitted to the local planning authority. Notices (often on bright yellow paper) may be posted at or near the site to inform interested parties of this.

It is during this crucial 21-day period that objectors must get to work. Sometimes would-be objectors are unaware of or unprepared for an application and unable to act as effectively as they would like.

That is why an action committee needs to be set up now. The steering group, its prototype, have already assembled a veritable arsenal of data and are acquiring more and more as time goes on.

This is only the first stage in what might prove a long struggle. We hope that sense will prevail and the proponents of the scheme will not take it further, but if they do we shall be ready for them.

What is being proposed

A proposal to build 35 houses in Langham has been made on behalf of the developers GlavenHill by Lanpro, a planning consultancy based in Norwich, on whose site a summary may be found. No details of the proposed dwellings are given. In March it was stated on that page that the developers ‘propose to make a planning application for the proposed application later this year.’

This we await with interest.

GlavenHill at Dereham

In 2018, 291 homes were approved for construction at Dereham despite ‘significant opposition’ from the community. The initial proposal was put forward on behalf of GlavenHill by Lanpro. According to the Eastern Daily Press, this decision was reached four months after another 279 homes were approved at Dereham. The plans were approved by a vote of six to four. Full story here.