Cabinet members approve removal of Whyburn Farm from Ashfield’s local plan

The greenbelt land had been allocated for 3,000 homes under the council’s housing document, but was met with fierce opposition from nearby residents, who submitted hundreds of responses to a public consultation and provided an almost 8,000-name petition calling for the proposal to be scrapped.

The council said it had ‘listened to their concerns’, with the authority’s local plan development panel recommending Whyburn Farm should be removed from the document.

Now cabinet members have endorsed the recommendation by approving plans to change the direction of the local plan process.

Rather than submitting a plan for 8,226 homes over 15 years, the authority will remove all 3,000 homes from Whyburn and instead emphasise the plan’s wider benefits, including job creation.

However, controversial plans for a 1,000-home settlement on land off Cauldwell Road, Sutton, remain on the cards.

The council will also highlight the difficulties in bringing the plan forward without ‘encroaching on the greenbelt’, with the authority stating it is only capable of building 1,100 homes on brownfield former industrial sites.

It means the council will now go back to the panel to finalise the reduced plan, including setting out where about 5,000 homes will be built, before another public consultation.

Coun Jason Zadrozny, council leader, told the cabinet: “If we don’t progress with this option and go to consultation, Ashfield would be a developer’s charter where anyone can put in applications.

“Ashfield residents deserve better than that. This might not be a perfect plan, but at least it protects swathes of land.

“The clear fight for us is to say we cannot accommodate 8,000 houses in Ashfield without going into the greenbelt.”

The move follows comments by senior Government officials – including new Prime Minister Liz Truss, her predecessor Boris Johnson and former Housing Secretary Michael Gove – about potential policy shifts.

All three suggested protections against greenbelt development were on the horizon, or made reference to a future change to the current housing calculation methodology.

Existing rules mean the Government creates housing calculations and councils use these to set housing targets.

In Ashfield, the calculations meant 8,226 homes were needed between now and 2038, a target described by local politicians as ‘unrealistic’.