Horsey Bridge: Planning chair says business park was always going to be 'pushed through'

An application to build a business park in Stanground was always going to be “pushed through”, Peterborough City Council’s (PCC) planning committee chair has claimed.

Cllr Chris Harper (Peterborough First, Stanground South) voted against building industrial units at Horsey Bridge off Whittlesey Road when the proposal was brought to the committee in March and spoke against it when it returned, and was approved, in June.

The councillor temporarily stepped aside from his chairing duties to oppose the application at its second hearing, held partly because the the council had new and independent legal advice to present to the committee, contained in a report exempt from public viewing.

Being shown this, which Cllr Harper says suggested the council would likely lose if the applicant – Barnack Estates UK – appealed the committee’s original decision, as well as being told how much losing such an appeal might cost, “put pressure on the committee” to approve the application, Cllr Harper said.

“I think having a pre-briefing that advises them that if they were to lose an appeal on this it would cost a lot of money and external independent legal advice that says they would lose pretty much sways the mind,” he continued.

“When I saw that that had happened before we even got to the hearing, I must admit I thought that it’s going to take a lot of convincing to sway the committee the other way.”

He added that publishing the legal advice “would have helped from a transparency point of view” and that he believes that, “no matter what we’d done, this was going to be, in one way or another, pushed through”.

Asked about this perception, council leader Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald (Conservatives, West) said that the proposal returned to the committee because “the legal advice confirmed that the [initial] decision was wrong and reasons given for refusal were wrong”.

Bringing the application back to committee helped “avoid an unnecessary and lengthy appeal process that would cost the council several hundred thousand pounds to defend,” he added.

Cllr Fitzgerald has also said that Cllr Harper should consider resigning as planning committee chair, that he was “clearly predetermined” on the Horsey Bridge proposal and that three Conservative councillors who ‘called in’ the original decision have been “vindicated” and are owed an apology from him and others.

Three members of the planning committee, all of them Conservatives, asked for a second look to be taken at the application – called calling it in, in council speak – after it was rejected in March.

They later withdrew these call-ins amid criticism from Cllr Harper and others, as well as multiple resignations from the Conservative group by councillors who referenced Horsey Bridge among their reasons for leaving.

The councillors who called in the decision have maintained that they did so because the planning committee’s decision-making was “defective” the first time round, a view Cllr Fitzgerald supports.

Cllr Harper says he can “categorically say I was not predetermined” at Horsey Bridge’s first hearing and that he went into it with an open mind.

By the time it came round for a second hearing, he was predetermined, though, he added, which is why he stepped away from the committee and instead called for it to be rejected in his capacity as a ward councillor.

He also said he won’t apologise for taking issue with the call-ins because he still doesn’t believe there was a procedural error the committee needed to correct and that if the councillors were sure there was, they shouldn’t have withdrawn them.

What Cllr Harper and Cllr Fitzgerald do agree on, though, is that it’s highly unusual for an application to be brought back in front of the planning committee for a second time – both say they haven’t known something like this to happen before.

While Cllr Fitzgerald maintains that it was necessary because the committee’s first decision was wrong, Cllr Harper says that it was brought back because there was “more evidence and “more information” to give the committee, which he says he accepts, along with their ultimate decision.

The planning committee voted unanimously to approve the development at its second hearing.

As well as hearing from Cllr Harper, they heard from agent Kate Wood on behalf of Barnack Estates UK, who said that residents and councillors’ concerns have helped shape their final proposals for Horsey Bridge.

She also said that the business park will help bring business into Peterborough and provide more than 400 permanent jobs.

The developer must now submit detailed design work to the council before the business park can get underway.