Success in Local Plan Review

We acted for a local residents’ group, Leave The Layers Alone (LTLA) and instructed expert landscape advice for their objection in the emerging local plan to the inclusion of a sensitive landscape area on the approach to the historic market town of Saxmundham, Suffolk, historically known as The Layers. The objection resulted in redesignation on The Layers as open space following the Examination in Public.

Richard Buxton Solicitors were instructed by LTLA to make Reg 18 submissions to the emerging local plan to oppose a large housing allocation styled as a “garden neighbourhood” on a large parcel of greenfield land outside Saxmundham in Suffolk. These submissions were supported by expert evidence on landscape harm and increased risk of flooding and drainage.

LTLA’s main concern was that building new houses and other infrastructure on The Layers, a sensitive landscaped approach to the historic market town of Saxmundham, would harm the setting of the town. LTLA’s landscape expert provided evidence to show that the inclusion of the site was not based on a sound assessment of landscape sensitivity, and could not be accommodated without significant harm to the defining characteristic of the historic approach to Saxmundham.

Our Reg 18 submissions resulted in changes to the emerging plan at Reg 19, which proposed that The Layers was reallocated for informal/formal open space and woodland, thereby maintaining the open nature of the landscape, and crucially reducing the built area for housing and other infrastructure that would impact on viability and make the site less attractive to future housing developers. We made further Reg 19 submissions in February 2019, that the exclusion of built development on The Layers should remain.

The Examination in Public for the Local Plan was heard from August-September 2019. Sarah Knox-Brown (Solicitor, Richard Buxton solicitors) and LTLA’s landscape expert attended and advocated on LTLA’s behalf. The Planning Inspector agreed that to justify inclusion of the site that all of the built elements of the allocation could be met by housing to the west of the railway line and therefore keeping The Layers as open space.