Melissa Murphy KC appeared for the Council on the first and advised on the second. The cases are both noteworthy in that although the tilted balance was engaged and “substantial weight” and “significant weight” was attributed to the delivery of housing respectively, the appeals were nonetheless dismissed. 

The decision letters repay careful study. The Council’s progress towards the adoption of a new local plan seems to have really mattered, so too the steps taken in relation to the neighbourhood plan. There were concerns about the locational sustainability of the schemes. But in each decision, the landscape & visual harm caused by the development seems to have been decisive, although the landscape in question was not a valued landscape nor indeed the subject of any specific designation.

A copy of the first appeal decision can be found here and a copy of the second appeal decision can be found here.