Full News Report

5th October 2023

County Planners taken to task over Widegates houses

MORVAL parish councillors are calling on Cornwall Planning Committee to over-rule their officers’ recommendation to approve an additional five three-bedroomed houses at Little Chimneys – an area of land off the ‘cut-through’ linking the B3253 (Hessenford to Looe road) and the A387 through Widegates village.

A decision on the planning application would seem to rest partly on the interpretation of policies in the Morval Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP), the locally prepared and voted-on document that has been in use for exactly a year this month.

Parish councillors – at their meeting in the Village Hall, Widegates, on Wednesday, October 4 – heard from County Development Officer Shauna Vandermeulen, who said that planning staff were “minded to recommend the application for approval” and she contested the parish view that the plans were contrary to the NDP.

But Cllr Ben Pengelly, the parish council’s lead on planning issues, said that the county’s stance was certainly not in the spirit of the NDP and he added that other matters surrounding open spaces, ridge height lines (the parish council had always favoured bungalows over two-storey dwellings on the site) and the need for affordable homes still made the parish council’s case for refusal a strong one.

He specifically referred to the report of the Principal Public Space Officer Stuart Wallace, who was calling for no additional development in the Widegates area until what he described as the ‘severe’ lack of any public open space had been addressed.

Said Mr Wallace: ‘Previous assessments undertaken by the Public Space Team, as well as correspondence from the parish council and members of the community, are conclusive that there is a severe lack of public open space (POS), as well as access to the public rights of way (PROW) network or areas with any form of right to roam (CROW Access Land). 

“Therefore, before any substantial development is permitted there is a requirement to address this. The scheme that delivered Farrier’s Way (Widegates) was required to deliver a very small space, including some children’s space on land adjoining the development. 

“So far this has not materialised, which hasn’t stopped some of the land being transferred to Farriers Way. We would recommend that no further development be approved until the POS is delivered in full.

“The current development application is not providing any on-site POS that meets the council’s minimum size criteria. Furthermore, it adds five units to the previous four approved last year. 

“Were the nine to have been proposed at the same time this matter would have been highlighted earlier, and it does not seem acceptable that a piecemeal approach to development should be rewarded.”

Cllr Pengelly noted that Ms Vandermeulen was describing the proposed development as ‘rounding off’ but the parish council, he said, strongly disagreed with that suggestion, as it was more a case of building in the open countryside.

The parish council had already been told by Cornwall Councillor Armand Toms that there were currently 17,385 people on the housing need list throughout Cornwall and 9,082 (i.e more than 50 per cent) were wanting one-bedroomed properties. It was also estimated that there was a need of between 19 and 21 affordable homes in Morval parish.

Cllr Pengelly noted that since the developers, Mr D Barton and Mr R Pawson (Llewella Ltd, Plymouth), had not included any affordable homes in their proposal, they would be subject a contribution of £248,000 to be spent on the delivery of such properties in the parish within the next three years.

But he said it was unlikely that the sum would be required in Morval Parish in that timescale and, therefore, it would be spent elsewhere, possibly in a neighbouring parish – an assumption described as ‘spot on’ by Cllr Toms. 

In essence, said Cllr Pengelly, that meant there could be new homes fetching perhaps as much as £500,000 each on the open market ‘and we, in Morval Parish, don’t get anything’.

Cllr Graham Tamblyn said that Cornwall's planning officers never seemed to be on the parish council’s side. “Whatever we say, they disregard, and they seem to be on the side of the developers all the time,” he said.

The parish council unanimously agreed to ask that the full planning committee be allowed to make the final decision and they also decided to inform Cornwall councillor Ollie Monk, the portfolio holder for Planning and Housing, of all their concerns. 

Cllr Toms also vowed to support the parish council’s request for the matter to be decided by the committee, but Ms Vandermeulen has previously warned them: “It may not always be appropriate to take an application to committee if the planning position is so clear-cut that it would not be right to make a different decision to the one being recommended.”