Owen’s Farm Consultation Period Ended – What Happens Now?

There was a truly amazing response to the Owens Farm planning application – both in the public comments submitted to the Planning Authority and the support given across so many areas of activity.

There were over 1,000 objections lodged, which is absolutely incredible

So what happens next?

Although the public consultation period has ended, there are many statutory consultees who have additional time to respond to the Planning Authority, Hart District Council.

Whether responses are from members of the public or from the statutory consultees, the Planning Authority will consider them and examine all relevant planning matters raised. Of course with 1,000 public responses there is going to be a lot of duplication but the raw numbers alone provide evidence of the strength of feeling in the community.

The applicant is also able to see all of the issues raised and does have an opportunity to respond either to explain why particular objections are perhaps not valid in issues raised or to make changes to address issues raised. This is all a normal part of the process. They cannot fundamentally change the application without withdrawing and resubmitting (triggering a whole new process) but they can address individual matters.

There have been some instances in the past where changes made are not fundamental changes but are significant enough to trigger a fresh consultation – we hope that doesn’t happen!

The Planning Officer will review all of the consultee responses and all of the applicant’s representations. They will produce a report judging the application against the local planning policies, national planning policy and national planning guidelines. As we are sure you know by now, we are in a period where massively increased housing targets have given developers an opportunity to gain planning permissions that would not have been possible just a few months ago. But the application still has to meet planning requirements.

The timetable

The expected determination date was initially predicted to be mid-April, but due to missing information from the applicant regarding M3 junction, National Highways specifically requested a delay to 5th May to allow the applicant to supply the information. It is not certain but it is very possible that the decision would be referred to Hart DC’s Development Management Committee (formerly known as the Planning Committee). If that happens it would seem likely that it would be mid-May or mid-June at the earliest.

Possible outcomes

One possibility is that the applicant is advised that their proposal is fatally flawed and often in that situation the applicant withdraws the current application in order to come back with alternative proposals at the earliest possible opportunity and to reduce their costs. Or they may choose to risk it being refused anyway because they expect to appeal that decision in any case.

The outcome we are hoping for is that the application is refused, on multiple grounds. The applicant does then have the right to appeal that decision to the Planning Inspectorate. Then the applicant and the Planning Authority would present their cases to a Planning Inspector for a decision. That can take a long time, often a year, which is why an applicant might want to avoid it.

There is also the awful possibility that despite the many flaws we have all identified and know about this site and application, the application is granted because it does meet planning policies at this point in time (or has during the application process been tweaked to be compliant). In this case there is no appeal open to residents. Being an outline application, there still needs to be a further application for “reserved matters”, which in this case is everything except the principle of development and site access. But we really don’t want to think about that!!