FOLLOWING THE HEARING AT THE HIGH COURT ON 3rd DECEMBER 2024
PLANNING PERMISSION 22/P/01966 HAS BEEN QUASHED
BY ORDER OF THE HIGH COURT, PUBLISHED TODAY 13.1.2025
CONSENT ORDER – Sealed – 13.01.25
On 3rd December 2024 Mr Kolinsky KC, sitting as deputy High Court Judge, accepted all grounds of Send Parish Council’s challenge.
Following this hearing, Guildford Borough Council (GBC) approached Send Parish Council to sign a Consent Order to quash the planning permission it had granted on 12th June for application 22/P/01966. GBC accepted it had not taken into consideration Policy D13 relating to the Corridor of the River Wey when determining the application at the planning committee on 3rd January 2024.
Guildford Borough Council must now pay the costs of this challenge. Any funds that are returned to Send Parish Council will be held in the ‘planning appeals fund’ for when the application(s) are returned to the planning committee. We will seek your views on the donations we received from you, and what you would like to see happen to those funds and issue a further update in due course.
Send Parish Council is already working on preparations for when the application returns to Guildford Borough Council’s planning committee and the new application to ensure that all the evidence is before the committee and the policies for the River Wey Corridor and Conservation Area are given full consideration.
We hope that in having made this challenge on behalf of our residents, planning officers and planning committee members will recognize the strength of feeling of residents of the importance of Send’s landscape settings and our collective determination as a village to have our voice heard and be prepared to challenge the ongoing deluge of planning approvals in every corner of our village.
A Local Plan is designed to bring forward housing and meet ‘need’, but a Local Plan should also ‘protect’ other areas due to their special features. The GBC Local Plan (adopted in 2019) is failing to give this planning balance when meeting housing targets is given more consideration than any of these other policies. This is an issue that an Update of the GBC Local Plan needs to address – and with URGENCY.
Send Parish Council would again like to thank all residents for your contributions and support.
WELL DONE EVERYONE.
Cllr Julia Osborn
Chair, Send Parish Council