Decision to refuse approval for 650 homes on East of England Showground to be reviewed
Move comes after four councillors ‘called-in’ rejection
Council chiefs have approved a request for a review of a decision by planners to reject proposals to build 650 homes on the East of England Showground.
Four councillors submitted a call-in request two weeks ago after members of Peterborough City Council’s planning committee had turned down an outline planning application to build 650 homes on part of the 164-acre Showground that includes the former speedway track and grandstand.
The four are Councillor Wayne Fitzgerald (Con), Cllr Asim Mahmood (Lab), Cllr Jason McNally (Lab) and Cllr Scott Warren (Con)
Now council officers have approved the request for a second look at the plans for the 650 homes development.
A message to councillors, states that officers had sought external legal advice and had confirmed that the call in request met the necessary criteria.
It adds: “The Executive Director considers that the finely balanced nature of the decision, the complexity of the issues, and the number of signatories to the call in, warrants reconsideration of the application by the Appeals and Planning Review Committee.
Under council procedures, a call-in request has to go through a ‘determination process’ to make sure it is valid.
If the request is determined to be valid, an extraordinary meeting of the council’s appeals and planning review committee is then held to reconsider the application in its entirety.
It is understood the call-in was made on the basis that that the planning committee’s decision was wrong and did not conform to council policy.
Members of the planning committee spent more than six hours on October 15 considering two outline planning applications for the East of England Showground – both of which had been submitted by the Showground promoter AEPG on behalf of the landowner, the East of England Agricultural Society.
Councillors approved the main application for 850 homes plus a leisure village, hotel. school and care village.
But they rejected the second application for 650 homes stating that the reasons for refusal were ‘the loss of the Showground and speedway track’ and the number of proposed dwellings.
Hundreds of objections to the plans had been received from the public with many calling for the speedway track to be saved.