Costly public inquiry to take place over rejected 400-home Matlock Wolds plans

A Derbyshire council is set to defend a public inquiry over rejected plans for more than 400 homes on the hillside above a flood-hit town. Derbyshire Dales District Council has a budget of £250,000 set aside to fight planning appeals and it is to use this funding to defend a public inquiry into the 423-home Matlock Wolds plans from William Davis Homes.

The council agreed the appeal budget in September, following the use of £181,619 fighting and losing an appeal over 87 homes at Leys Farm in Ashbourne, bordering the A50. Now the council is also looking to spend a further £61,778 to extend a contract for the current interim principal planning officer up to March 2025, to be funded from the authority’s reserves.

It also says the planning inspector for the eight-day Wolds inquiry, to start on February 4 in a yet to be determined location, could award “significant” costs to be paid by the council should it lose, and that this would see the authority having to draw down more money. For context, the council withdrawing two of its reasons for refusal from the Ashbourne appeal saw the inspector tell the authority to pay £20,000 in costs to the developer, Woodall Homes.

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Councillors gave four reasons for refusing the Wolds planning application off Gritstone Road in Matlock in March: Lack of detail on flooding risk and public safety, loss of biodiversity, harm to character and appearance, and lack of affordable housing. The council says it intends to hire independent experts in drainage, biodiversity, viability and landscape to help defend the appeal and will involve heavy involvement from the authority’s interim development manager.

When William Davis Homes submitted its appeal in August, Sarah Whetton, the firm’s group land director, had said: “As a responsible developer, we have a reputation for quality and caring for the communities we build in. The proposed development will help to address the demand for housing in the area and contribute to the government’s new homes target of 1.5 million in the next five years.

“We will provide detailed information about the drainage measures as part of the planning conditions, which are part of the ongoing planning process. It is disappointing we’re having to go through the appeal process given the site is allocated in the Local Plan and there is a dire need for additional housing in Matlock.”

The company says it will ask for an independent engineer, to be appointed by Derbyshire County Council, to review the proposed scheme. Flooding was one of the core concerns over the scheme, on the hillside above Matlock, which has been hit by numerous bouts of heavy flooding in recent years – in part caused by run-off off the surrounding hills.

Numerous speakers during the March district council meeting referred to a report from a chartered civil engineer hired by Derbyshire County Council who had found that flood water collection ponds planned on the site would need to be so large that they could “pose a threat to life” to the downstream population. More than 2,500 people signed a petition started last June by the Wolds Action Group opposing the scheme and a total of 462 objection letters were submitted to the council over the project.

At the meeting which saw the scheme rejected in March, Cllr Peter Slack said: “Flooding is the big issue and this will contribute to flooding and if we persist with these holding tanks, well, they will only hold the water so long and the water will flow right down the Bentley Brook and to Knowlston Place and Matlock town centre and it will have a catastrophic impact on Matlock eventually. We can’t go ahead with this.” When the scheme was rejected in March, Julie Atkin, a member of the Wolds Action Group, said: “This is the wrong place to build. We all know we need new homes but they need to be built in the right places. The Wolds is clearly the wrong place.”

She said the scheme would see the loss of “rare and irreplaceable landscapes” and that the developer’s inability to afford infrastructure funding through Section 106 payments would lead to taxpayers footing the bill. The developer is currently required to make £7.4 million in contributions towards required improvements to roads, schools and health services to cater for the scheme and says this would leave it unable to provide affordable housing.

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