We have received a letter dated 18th March from Barratt Developments plc and Vistry Partnerships saying that they have secured a contract for the Vearse Farm site to bring forward the open market and affordable homes, associated infrastructure and all S106 obligations as contained within the outline planning consent.

The letter is an introduction and providing a point of contact.

The companies have also offered to have a virtual meeting to discuss any questions we might have at this stage. We have already replied to say that we will take them up on this offer.

Our next Advearse team meeting is on 29th March when we will discuss the questions and concerns that we want to raise with Barratt/Vistry.

If you have any questions that you would like us to raise then please email us or leave a comment on the website.

We will provide a web post on the questions we will be raising and we will provide feedback on the responses we receive.

We have completed a draft response on the Dorset Council Local Plan. The full document can be accessed via the link below. We welcome comments on this response and will be submitting the final version to Dorset Council on 12 March. Also please feel free to use or refer to this document in your own response to Dorset Council.

http://www.advearse.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ADVEARSE-response-to-Local-Plan-03-03-21.docx

Our main concerns as set out in more detail in our response are summarised below.

We have been asked by some supporters how to go about putting in comments/objections on the local plan. Below we set out to do this.

Follow this link to Dorset Council Local Plan page:

https://www.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/planning-buildings-land/planning-policy/dorset-council-local-plan.aspx

There is a “Comment on Dorset Council Local Plan” box. Click on that and it will give you an opportunity to make comments. The system takes you to a comment box for each section of the Local Plan. You only need to comment on the parts you are interested in. Just leave the other sections blank.

Alternatively you can email your comments in to planningpolicy@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk

Below is a link to Bridport Town Council’s page on the Local Plan and a video presenting a summary of the Local Plan. This is a really useful short video so please feel free to share this link with anyone else who may or should be interested.

The council’s response to the Local Plan is due to be publicly available after being signed off by their Planning Committee meeting on Monday 22 February.

The CPRE have also set out their concerns with the Local Plan and lack of proper consultation with the people of Dorset. See link below:

https://dorset-cpre.org.uk/news/current-news/item/2268-dorset-cpre-slams-local-plan

The most important section for us in the Local Plan is the West Dorset Functional Area – Section 36 – Bridport.

Vearse Farm plans are covered in Section 36.5.3 which notes “The whole Vearse Farm site could deliver around 930 new homes. This includes about 760 on the main consented part of the site with around a further 170 homes on three residual sites, namely: land at Vearse Farmhouse; land west of Coronation Road; and land to the west of Pine View”.

As a result of losing the judicial review the 760 houses are now “consented” and cannot be opposed/stopped. However, the proposed extra 170 houses will need Outline Planning Permission. The issue for us is that if these extra houses remain in the Local Plan and it is approved by the planning inspector then it will be extremely difficult to stop them from receiving planning permission. Even if we could persuade the Planning Committee to go against their own planning officer recommendation and refuse the planning application the developer could appeal and the Planning Inspectorate would inevitably side with the developer.

So our best chance to oppose this expansion of the VF urban extension is by trying to get it dropped from the Local Plan. To have any chance we need to build up a groundswell of opposition. So the more supporters sending in objections the better! So please ask family/friends to also object.

Points to bear in mind are:

• The housing planned for Bridport totals 1,139 which is 75% of all the houses included in the plan for the whole of West Dorset. Given the area this is a huge focus on Bridport, which is by many measures is a small market town.
• The housing target for Dorset for the next 17 years is 30,481 as set by government, but Dorset Council are proposing 39,285 houses. So they plan to build 8,804 (29%) more houses than required by the government!
• Central government’s housing targets are 47% higher than the existing Local Plans in Dorset and  are way in excess of any sensible forecast of local housing need.
• The Government’s targets and algorithm are based on outdated and flawed population and household projections.
• The central housing targets are unrealistically high not least because the central algorithm increases assessed local housing need by 40% to reflect high house prices. The apparent justification for this increase in numbers is that if you build more, then prices will come down!

In addition there are plenty of other grounds for opposing the expansion to the VF urban extension: further building on and erosion of the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), increased flood risk of the site and surrounding area, extra load on overstretched Bridport infrastructure (eg car parking in town centre), increased traffic volumes on an unsuitable road (West Road), increased traffic risk to pedestrians/cyclists and failure to provide suitable affordable eco housing for local people.

We will be putting our own draft comments on the Local Plan on our Advearse website early March for our supporters to see and submit our final comments to Dorset Council by their 15 March deadline.

6 April 2020
PRESS RELEASE

ADVEARSE has, overall, lost its judicial review of West Dorset Council’s outline planning permission for what is believed to be the biggest ever development on a single area of outstanding natural beauty at Vearse Farm, Bridport.
In a written judgment issued on Monday 6 April, ADVEARSE was found to have won the legal argument on the first ground of their case — that the former West Dorset Council (since subsumed into the new unitary authority) had failed to have regard to statutory provisions and national
planning rules that require the harmful impact of the development on the conservation area and heritage assets to be assessed against the public benefits. The judge, Mr Justice Swift, said that ADVEARSE’s criticisms were ‘well-founded’ as the Council had not properly addressed the application of the relevant section of the National Planning Policy Framework, ‘a matter material to the decision the Council had to take.’ However, the judge said, ‘The role of the court is no more than to ensure that the decision and the decision-making process meet basic legal standards’, and because he believed the Council’s inadequacies may have made no difference to the committee’s ultimate decision, he had to rule against the claimants. The other two grounds of the case were rejected.
In court, ADVEARSE’s barrister, Matthew Henderson from Landmark Chambers, revealed defects and demonstrated that key objections and information from statutory experts, such as the conservation officer, the landscape officer and the AONB team, had been omitted from the officer’s report on which planning committee members had based their decision.
The judge said, ‘Planning issues are often controversial, all those affected by them deserve to be reassured that the officers’ reports that inform councillors’ decisions are sufficient to identify how any particular proposal is affected by specific statutory obligations … and by material policies’.
These reports, he said, ‘must meet some basic standards of good public administration’ and ‘basic level of coherence’. But, in a damning assessment, the judge said the West Dorset planning officer’s report did not meet the ‘bare minimum standard’. He likened it to a ‘jigsaw puzzle’ without a picture ‘on the front of the box.’
Further, the Council officer had made assumptions and speculations about the mitigation of any harmful impact of the Vearse Farm development which the judge regarded to be ‘optimistic’, ‘not realistic’, and which could not possibly be determined until later in the detailed planning process.
This, he stated, was ‘an incorrect approach.’
The report was, however, found to be ‘sufficient’ in terms of the remaining two grounds of the case which referred to failure to take into account other relevant aspects of the National Planning Policy Framework.
Stephanie Hill from ADVEARSE’s legal team said, ‘It is frustrating for our clients to have demonstrated that the Council’s decision-making was legally flawed, but still to have lost the challenge. The impact of the development will have to be given more detailed consideration as the planning application progresses, and this judgment emphasises the importance of good quality, reasoned decision-making throughout that process.’
ADVEARSE Chairman Barry Bates said, ‘After fighting tooth and nail we have been let down at every stage of the planning process. The JR was a last-ditch attempt to stop, or at best delay, this development. We are bitterly disappointed but accept that the courts are limited to looking at the legality of the process rather than the political or moral rights or wrongs of the case.’ ‘However,’ he said, ‘the old West Dorset planning authority came out of the affair badly and we hope that lessons have been learned, particularly now that we have a different council and are living in a different global and economic context.’
Bridport town councillor and ADVEARSE member Sarah Carney said, ‘There needs to be a review of national planning policy which forces rural councils to meet metro-centric housing targets which fail to deliver for local people and deliberately encourage private developers to build thousands of
unsuitable, unsustainable and unaffordable houses all over our countryside.’
ADVEARSE member and former district councillor David Tett, said ‘Vearse Farm houses will not be affordable to local families or keyworkers. They will, however, attract retirees from the big cities and second-home owners, resulting in more traffic and unbearable pressure on our already desperately over-stretched health and social care services.’
ADVEARSE spokesman Lewis Gerolemou said, however, that ‘Vearse Farm is far from done and dusted. It remains our view and that of our supporters that there are serious problems with the plans which will need to be addressed before any houses are built. The developers can rest assured that they will face intense scrutiny and challenge at the detailed planning stages and at any point should they fail to deliver what has been promised in the S106 agreement.’
The Chairman of Dorset CPRE Peter Bowyer said, ‘This outcome is very disappointing. It is clear that the planning authority in Dorset has little respect for the designation of the AONB. Dorset deserves to have a better planning service for the area. The fundamental questions of the right
numbers of houses, the right places and the right tenures are not being addressed within the current planning system. Alternative community-driven approaches are necessary in order to ensure that the incremental urbanisation of Dorset is not allowed to proceed.’
‘We now need the Dorset AONB to be upgraded to a National park. This would have the responsibility and resources to conserve and embrace our wonderful landscapes while also having the duty to respond proactively to local housing needs and so develop the local housing that local people need.’
ADVEARSE Treasurer, Phil Summerton, said, ‘We would like to thank our wonderful lawyers, Leigh Day, Landmark Chambers and our barrister Matthew Henderson for all their help and support. A big thanks also to the Dorset Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) who donated £10,000 to the cause, and tremendous thanks to the hundreds of people who have supported us over the past six years and who contributed towards the £34,000 that made it possible for the judicial review to go ahead’.

Further information
The full written judgment can be found here:
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2020/807.html
Information about ADVEARSE can be found at: http://www.advearse.org.uk/about-advearse/
Email: advearse@aol.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ADVEARSE/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/advearse
Crowdfunder: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/save-west-dorset-aonb
Vearse Farm development planning application: WD/D/17/000986
https://planning.dorset.gov.uk/onlineapplications/
applicationDetails.do?keyVal=DCAPR_132168&activeTab=summary

The vote on the Neighbourhood plan is on 27 February and is an opportunity to have a say on the future of Bridport. Below is the text of an email from the Bridport Town Clerk giving some information that will be helpful. Please feel free to share this information.

Early feedback from coverage of the Neighbourhood Plan referendum suggests that a lot of people are engaged (which is great!) but may not be able for a number of reasons to absorb the entire 106-page document.

In response, David has produced a summary guide to the Plan, and a narrated video summary.  Both are available from the main NP page at https://www.bridport-tc.gov.uk/projects/neighbourhood-plan/.

Hard copies of the summary guide are available from the Town Council on request, although naturally we’d encourage people not to ask unless they are unable to access the website version.

Many thanks to David for reacting so quickly to the significant number of requests for these summaries.

Please share this information via your own networks.  I have shared the summaries on the ‘Bridport Banter’ and ‘Bridport Notice’ Facebook pages, with a combined following of almost 24,000 people.

I’m sure also you’ll be aware by now that both poll cards and the NP leaflet are dropping through letter boxes this week.  The Bridport News also produced a helpful two-page spread last week, which is reproduced online at https://www.bridportnews.co.uk/news/18216834.important-points-know-neighbourhood-plan-ahead-referendum/.

The Judicial Review for the Vearse Farm planning application was held last Tuesday in Cardiff. The case over run and was completed on Friday. We are now waiting to hear the judge’s written verdict.