On November 7, 2005 the Society won a famous victory over the National
Trust and Countryside Properties, with the announcement by the Office
of the Deputy Prime Minister that he had rejected their appeal for 191
residential units on the Canadian Red Cross Hospital site at Cliveden. The
Trust has now announced that it will build only the 135 age-restricted
units for which it had planning permission.
It is worth remembering that the planning officers of the SBDC, for
reasons that are unclear to everyone, had recommended that the 191 scheme
be accepted, and had even warned of significant costs of a lost appeal
being awarded against the Council. If the councillors had accepted their
advice, we would be facing the huge environmental and traffic problems
which (everyone now agrees) would have ensued from this huge development.
On hearing of the original application, the very effective
'Cliveden No' campaign was launched under the inspired direction of Euan Felton, with
posters designed by Sheila Horton (and generously printed free by one
of our members) put up throughout the village (and even on the Red Cross
Hospital site itself!). An exhibition was held in the barn on the Village
Green, a website created, and MPs and councillors lobbied. We packed
the council meeting room on the day of the decision, and although some
members of the planning committee (including the then chairman) supported
the application, Councillors Lidgate and Sandy persuaded a majority of
the committee to reject it.
We thought that the rejection by the SBDC, the 'Cliveden No' Campaign
and a survey of Taplow residents showing overwhelming opposition to
the plans, would persuade the NT - who always claimed to take note of
local objections - to drop the plans. However, they did not, and in fact
launched an appeal against the decisions. Karl Lawrence and Euan Felton,
among others, proposed a motion at the AGM of the NT condemning the NT
for this decision. The vote was won on a count of members’ votes by
32,000 to 28,000. However, the chairman of the NT cast his 19,000 proxy
votes in favour of the NT so the motion was officially lost! During the
meeting the NT chairman claimed that the 135 option was not viable and
denied that it had received a formal offer for this from a developer. The
NT later had to retract this when the developer produced a letter from
them acknowledging the offer!
At this stage we were depressed. It was almost taken for granted that
the NT would win on appeal, since the SBDC officers had said so.
The first suggestion that the NT case might not be as strong as
had been thought came when they suddenly put in another
application for 170 houses, without the affordable houses that had been
in the original application. They claimed this took account of local
opinion, and indeed were successful in persuading a councillor and an
ex-councillor that this was the best option available. They claimed
that it was not only better than the 191 application,
but would also save the council a substantial amount of
money in legal costs for the appeal. However, we were successful again in
persuading the councillors at SBDC to reject the application, although
on this occasion the officers also recommended this on a technicality
(ironically, the lack of affordable housing!).
There were some who certainly felt we should have accepted the 170
option. However, the next sign of weakness from the NT came with an
extraordinary letter from Fiona Reynolds, the NT’s chief executive,
saying that they had done a survey and, lo and behold, the 135 option was
viable, and that they would now build it if the 191 was rejected.
The enquiry lasted eight days and took place in August 2005 at the
SBDC’s offices in Capswood. For the NT were a QC (rumoured to be on a
retainer of £30,000 a day!) and about five other expert witnesses, who
all remained for the eight days. Against the appeal were, for the SBDC,
a barrister and planning and traffic experts, who, with the exception
of the barrister, were only present when giving evidence. Taplow Parish
Council was represented for the whole period by Euan Felton, and on a
number of days by Mary Trevallion. The Society was represented by Anne
and John Hanford for the eight days, and by numerous others who came
and went during the proceedings. The people who gave
evidence included Karl Lawrence, Prof. Bernard
Trevallion, Richard Dawson and Eva Lipman.
The nub of the case for the NT, presented by the QC, was that whereas
the application for the 191 had been rightly rejected on sustainability
grounds by the SBDC (so much for the advice of the planners!), new
evidence had now emerged, which was the basis of the appeal. The 'new'
evidence was that the NT had declared that if the 191 application was
turned down, they would now build the existing application for 135
units - hence the Fiona Reynolds letter. Under the Byzantine rules
of planning applications, this meant that the 191 had to be compared
with the 135 against current planning guidelines. Of course the 135,
which had been allowed much earlier, did not comply with many of these,
and the QC stated he would show that therefore the 191 appeal should
be allowed. The rest of the enquiry therefore consisted of comparing
the two schemes against current guidelines.
Before the opening of the enquiry, however, the two sides agreed that
some facts would not be disputed and it was in one of these that the
NT’s traffic expert made a critical error. To support their case,
the NT had commissioned traffic surveys on two communities, which they
claimed most nearly resembled the traffic liable to be generated by the
two schemes. Naturally these were carefully chosen to support the 191
scheme, and indeed the NT’s traffic expert’s evidence showed that
it would actually generate 20% less traffic than the
135. This was surprising, but the NT liked the conclusion so much they
didn’t check the figures too well, and put them forward as evidence
supporting their case. Unfortunately, as the SBDC’s expert was able
to show, in the calculation they had compared a 24-hour survey for the
135 scheme with a 12-hour one for the 191. When the correct figures
were inserted it was found that the 191 scheme generated over twice the
traffic of the 135 scheme! It was too late to change anything and the
NT had to accept this conclusion, which was critical to the appeal.
The second argument put forward by the NT was that the 191 scheme complied
with the requirement that there should be at least 30 units per hectare,
but the 135 did not. Clearly, the number of units per hectare depended
not only on the number of units, but also on the area of the site. The
NT had included the whole area up to the boundary with the Cliveden
estate. However, the SBDC’s expert argued that this was wrong and that
under the regulations significant buffer zones at the boundary should
be excluded.
Esoteric arguments then took place as to what was a significant buffer
zone and what was a significant open space, which should be included.
The NT had done a superb landscape job around the houses (including the
provision of low scrub and holly bushes) and as a result the inspector
agreed in his report that the SBDC were right and the 135 did meet the
30 units per hectare requirement.
Justice cannot be done in the space available to the significant
contributions made by a number of the Society’s witnesses, but a couple
of amusing incidents are worth recording. In the first of these, the
condescending QC cross-examining Euan Felton produced a document referring
to the area, which Euan had been unable to find. Unfortunately for the
QC, as Euan pointed out to laughter in the public gallery, it referred
to the area around Taplow Court, not Cliveden and had been signed by
Lord Desborough, not Lord Astor! In the second, the timetables for the
buses, which the NT claimed would be used by all the schoolchildren and
commuters to the station, were challenged by Richard Dawson, who asked
if the NT had actually tried running buses over that route at that time
in the morning. There was a deadly silence from the NT. It was clear they
had not, and as a result Richard was able to pour scorn on the proposals.
The Inspector in his report felt that the NT had greatly over-estimated
the contribution the buses would make to reducing car usage. He also
said that the attempted restriction of car ownership, and therefore
usage, by providing only 1.5 car spaces per unit in the 191 proposal
(as opposed to 2.2 in the 135) would be unlikely to have the effect the
NT claimed and quoted evidence we put forward from Cedar Chase (which
has only 1.5 spaces per house) to show it does not.
His report, as we all know, rejected the appeal, citing the
unsustainablity of the site in terms of traffic generation as the main
reason.
His conclusion was in fact
that the 191 scheme was 'an inappropriate use of the Green Belt'. To our
surprise the findings were not only accepted but endorsed by the Office
of the Deputy Minister. One must ask what on earth the NT is doing,
promoting for its own interests something which even John Prescott thinks
is an inappropriate use of the Green Belt.
The NT is now clearing the site and has announced it will build the 135
scheme. Their plan to call it Cliveden Village has aroused considerable
opposition. There is no church, school or pub, or indeed any other
facilities in the scheme that one would expect in a village. It is
obviously an attempt to mislead potential purchasers, and it is to be
hoped that the Parish Council or SBDC (who we understand have to approve
the name) will not do so. The units, incidentally, are said to be priced
at between £400,000 and £1,000,000, if you are interested.
