Background

The planning application proposal directly responds to the Mendip District Council Local Plan Part 2 Policy WM1 ‘Land south of Roughmoor Lane’, which allocates the land for residential development. The Local Plan Part 2 was adopted on 20th December 2021.

The policy states that the site should deliver a minimum of 40 homes, 30% of which are to be affordable homes and that the site layout, building height and landscaping should be designed to minimise the visual impact of the development and reflect the local materials and styles.

Policy WM1 also requires that up to 0.1ha of land be made available for the delivery of a community facility, and 0.13ha of accessible bat habitat should be provided.

In light of the allocation, we submitted a draft proposal including layout plan to Mendip District Council in September 2021 to obtain formal pre-application advice. Following this initial advice, the layout was amended to reflect the comments received.

In November 2021 we presented a draft of the development layout to the Parish Council in order to obtain initial comments prior to undertaking wider public consultation. An initial consultation ran from 12th January until 16th January 2022, and a virtual presentation was held on 20th January 2022. An in-person consultation event was then held on 9th March 2022 at Westbury-sub-Mendip Village Hall.

Feedback from the consultation events brought to our attention that the local community felt strongly about the omission of the disused agricultural buildings to the east of the site from the development, and that the community land required by Policy WM1 should be accommodated in this location.

In response to this feedback, the planning strategy was reviewed to explore the development potential of the disused agricultural buildings in conjunction with the Policy WM1 allocation. Pre-application advice on the revised strategy was received from Mendip District Council in February 2023 in which Officer’s discourage the inclusion of the agricultural buildings within the application for the allocated site.

Since that time, discussions with the Parish Council and Neighbourhood Plan Working Group continued. In December 2023, the Parish Council informed the Church Commissioners for England that following a local community survey, the village’s preference for the location of the community land is in the northeast corner of the allocated site, adjacent to the stone-built barns. Conversations continue separately with the Parish Council in relation to the stone-built barns.

Given the updated preference for the community land to be within the allocated site, further pre-application advice was sought. In May 2024, feedback was received from Somerset Council confirming that the principle of development is acceptable on the allocated site. In parallel, additional survey work has been undertaken including updated ecology, highways, arboriculture and landscape surveys, some of which are continuing through the summer.