Senior Solicitor
Bird sanctuary housing development refused
Adams Road, Cambridge housing development
The proposal was to demolish a single large house within the conservation area and replace it with two new houses, one of which, with much glass, would have been six metres from a bird sanctuary. Trustees and supporters of the sanctuary feared this would result in light spill, bird strikes and potentially set a precedent for further development surrounding the site.
Richard Buxton Solicitors were instructed by the Trustees of Adams Road Bird Sanctuary, Cambridge. The Sanctuary is a City & County Wildlife Site not far from the city centre, protected since the 1920s and the focus of a significant amount of University research.
Despite concerns expressed by the council’s wildlife officer, the planning officer recommended approval. We wrote to the Council pointing out impact on the conservation area (of which the Sanctuary was a noted component) and the lack of compliance with local plan policies. We encouraged a site visit by the Planning Committee.
A combination of the letters, and other impressive campaigning by the Trustees and others led to unanimous refusal of the proposals by the Committee. Many of the reasons set out in our objection letters were cited. The Trustees of the Sanctuary, with their greater appreciation of local plan policies, are now using this experience to ensure that consultation responses to the emerging local plan seek better protection for such wildlife sites and the buffer zones that surround them.
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Commentary
As the vast majority of committee decisions follow the planning officer’s recommendation, this unanimous vote for refusal was a real victory for the community. One of the key factors was persuading the council to arrange a committee site visit. A site visit is important, particularly in more unusual schemes, where the committee needs to fully appreciate the site to understand the setting and impact of the proposed development. Councillors are often not familiar with the area where development is proposed. Despite this, site visits are often not formally facilitated by the council and this can be to the detriment of good decision making.
In this case, once the committee could appreciate the context of the development and the harm that would potentially be caused to both the conservation area and the wildlife site, it could fully understand the issues that objectors had raised (in the context of planning policy) and correctly refused the application.