A Government Planning Inspector has ruled that Cheshire East Council does not have a 5 year supply of housing land.
The Inspector reached this conclusion when allowing an appeal and granting planning permission for 94 homes to be built in Sandbach.
In his report, dated 11th April 2014, the Inspector stated "About 40% of the houses that are assumed to be delivered within five years do not have planning permission. These dwellings would be built at strategic sites, sites awaiting legal agreements and windfalls."
He continued "There was a distinct lack of credible hard evidence to justify the projections for some of these sites and consequently it would be unwise to place too much reliance on the potential for delivering a significant amount of the housing requirement from such sources. About half of these sites are not yet the subject of planning applications and matters such as Environmental Impact and traffic assessments have still to be determined at some of them, not withstanding the need to relocate existing occupiers from more than one of the sites. 18% of the dwelling requirement is meant to come from this source. I am not persuaded that the evidence confirms that such optimism is justified.
"Whilst I note that the Council intends to improve the delivery of legal agreements that are necessary to enable planning permissions to be granted, until this begins to happen there is no certainty that nearly 20% of the five year supply could be delivered from this source. In any event legal agreements will only be executed speedily if all parties wish them to be and that is not always the case."
This latest decision will come as a blow to Cheshire East Council who published a document detailing its five-year supply of housing land in January 2014. Speaking at the time Cheshire East Council Leader Councillor Michael Jones said this signalled the Council's determination to continue its fight to fend off unplanned, unsustainable and unwanted development in the Borough and protect the best of our countryside.
This morning (14th April), Cllr Michael Jones said "Am very disappointed over Planning Inspector's comments on our 5 year housing supply. We certainly intend to aggressively challenge this!"
He added "Have just finished meeting with CEC's senior planning officers and we stand by our position - we do have a 5 year housing supply!"
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