Successful Objection to New Holiday Village

Richard Buxton Solicitors acted for an adjacent landowner in a successful objection ensuring proposals for the redevelopment of a quarry site in Suffolk into a holiday village were withdrawn. In so doing, the ecology and biodiversity importance of the site were formally recognised.

We were instructed by a chicken farmer in Suffolk, whose farm is adjacent to Thorington Quarry, an old gravel pit which was proposed for redevelopment to 70 holiday lodges.

The site was first worked for the extraction of minerals in 1989, pursuant to a permission granted by Suffolk County Council subject to various after-use restoration conditions to agriculture. Quarrying ceased in 2003 and the site then entered its restoration phase. In 2008 the scheme of restoration was amended at which point Great Crested Newts were found on site, and there was then a shift towards a final restoration scheme based on nature conservation for the longer term.

Against this background the quarry owners in 2019 began promoting redevelopment of the site to a holiday lodge campus. To that end the LPA produced a screening opinion, which concluded that no EIA was required, describing the site as “a restored former quarry in aftercare”. Whilst aftercare work has been largely completed, neither it nor the ongoing management plan have been signed off by Suffolk County Council.

When the actual holiday lodge application was submitted in early 2022 we were instructed to object. We successfully argued that the screening opinion had to be revisited because it was out of date (Champion v North Norfolk DC [2015] UKSC 52 applied) and based on factual error. In addition, the very proximate and newly completed holiday park at High Lodge Leisure provided cumulative impacts which needed to be considered.

Key to our strategy, however, was urging the County Council to take enforcement action on the incomplete aftercare condition. Whilst they declined to take enforcement action, they did write to the LPA stating that the LPA had no jurisdiction to decide the application whilst there were minerals conditions within the County Council’s jurisdiction, which were outstanding. This led to the LPA declining to proceed with the application which the developers then withdrew.