Usual planning committee chair won't oversee vote on Horsey Bridge development

A council debate on a controversial planning application won’t be overseen by the usual person.

Cllr Chris Harper (Peterborough First, Stanground South) is the chair of Peterborough City Council’s (PCC) planning committee, which votes on proposals for new developments in and around the city.

But he’ll step aside when plans to build a business park at Horsey Bridge in Stanground are debated and voted on next week.

The plans, which have received hundreds of public objections, have already been turned down once by the committee, with Cllr Harper among those who spoke against them.

“Clearly, I won’t be able to chair that item because I have made it known that I’m against it,” he said.

“I was against it when we took the original decision and I’m strongly against it now.”

The debate will instead be chaired by Cllr Amjad Iqbal (Labour, Central), the committee's vice chair.

Cllr Harper will instead speak against the proposal alongside Cllr Brian Rush (Peterborough First, Stanground South) at the planning meeting on Tuesday, 27th June, with Cllr Ray Bisby (Peterborough First, Stanground South) also in attendance to offer support.

All three men are former members of PCC’s Conservative group, with Cllrs Rush and Bisby citing concerns about the Horsey Bridge application among their reasons for resigning from it.

The application, made by Barnack Estates UK Limited, was rejected by the planning committee in March.

It returns around three months later with new advice from PCC’s planning officers bolstering their recommendation to approve the development.

Cllr Harper says that he’s never heard of something like this happening in the eight years he’s been on the committee.

Council executive Adrian Chapman agrees that it's an “unusual decision” to return the application to councillors.

But independent legal advice, sought by the council after they were notified that Barnack Estates intended to appeal the application, suggests that they should review their reasoning, PCC says.

The councillors have been issued a new report that says that the application isn't considered to contravene local planning law; the possibility that it did was one of the reasons it was initially rejected.

Peterborough’s Local Plan (LP), which lays out the council’s planning policies, doesn’t designate the Horsey Bridge site as appropriate for development, but it does make allowances for more to be built if the city runs out of land intended for industrial uses.

The city has indeed run out of such land; it was critically low at the time of the planning meeting where the Horsey Bridge development was initially rejected.

The new report does “effectively counters everything” the planning committee said in their reasons for refusing it, Cllr Harper said, and he believes it's likely to be voted through.

But he will lobby committee members to vote against the proposal in his role as a ward councillor, he said, both by speaking at the meeting and writing to them beforehand.

Cllr Harper said that believes that, in eroding the boundary between Peterborough and the Fens, the development will cause substantial harm, and that it will also cause significant traffic issues in the area.

But he concedes that these are his opinions and that they're not shared by the experts consulted and quoted in the council's report.

The planning chair also questioned how the council has gotten into a position where there is no land left earmarked for industrial uses in the Peterborough LP before a new one has been drawn up.

Work on an updated LP started this year and it will in fact be discussed at the same planning meeting as the Horsey Bridge development.

But it could take years to complete, Cllr Harper said, meaning the committee risks being compelled to pass more industrial developments it would prefer to turn down in the meantime as it won't be able to cite the current LP as a reason for refusal.

Supporters of the plans have said that there is clearly a need for more industrial units, though, and that the development, comprising around 20 buildings off Whittlesey Road, will create jobs and support the businesses that occupy the site.

Barnack Estates founder Rob Facer has previously told the Peterborough Telegraph that his company, a “sympathetic developer”, had long had a good working relationship with PCC and that it won't give up on the development.

The application's new outcome will be published after the planning committee meeting at 1:30pm on Tuesday.