Why did city council not defend its own decision on housing development?

From the moment Canterbury City Council chose not to defend its refusal of permission for 300 new homes at Littlebourne, the fate of an attractive stretch of east Kent countryside was effectively sealed.

It was July last year that the council’s planning committee rejected the Gladman Developments scheme, which included a children’s play area and community hub, targeted for some 40 acres of farmland between The Hill and Bekesbourne Road. More than 300 letters of objection, including a representation from CPRE Kent, had been sent to the local authority.

The decision went against officers’ recommendation for approval, but a raft of issues, including pollution risks, poor transport links and harm to the rural character of Littlebourne, drew the conclusion from councillors that the scheme should be refused permission, with not one voting in favour.

Wholly predictably, Gladman, a land agent notorious for advancing housing developments against the wishes of local people and often local authorities, appealed the city council’s decision to reject its scheme.

The Barratt Redrow-owned company is probably the country’s greatest exponent of ‘planning by appeal’. Given this, it is difficult to believe the city council was not anticipating the appeal – and even more incomprehensible that it chose not to defend its own decision.

That had been a democratic conclusion reached by a planning committee in a local authority that could hardly be accused of being anti-housing. The decision to refuse Gladman permission for its wholly inappropriate scheme came as a surprisingly refreshing change to so much of what had gone before in the district.

So why did Canterbury City Council not challenge the appeal? Why did it leave Littlebourne Parish Council, local people and interested parties such CPRE Kent, represented by Peter Styles, co-chairman of our Canterbury district committee, to take up the battle against the Gladman machine – a battle that with comparatively limited resources they were never likely to win?

The city council’s reported reason of “insufficient legal grounds to challenge the application” is not good enough. It is nowhere near specific enough and lacks any form of meaningful transparency in what should have been a democratic process.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that some kind of agreement was reached behind closed doors.

Perhaps the city council’s folding left the planning inspector nowhere to go other than to back the Gladman appeal – certainly the extraordinary speed with which he reached his verdict indicated he wasn’t going to waste any time on such a baffling situation.

He spoke of the scheme’s “substantial benefits”, although they might not be apparent to the residents of Littlebourne and neighbouring Bekesbourne. They, and the rest of the district’s populace, deserve better than this.