300-home development in Buckingham rejected due to impact on local employment
Plans to build up to 300 new homes in Buckingham have been refused permission by Buckinghamshire Council.
Blueprints for a piece of land west of London Road also included a commercial and business zone of 192 hectares.
But councillors on the planning committee took issue with the application put forward by Rainier Developments Ltd, John Cowley, Piers Cowley and Jennifer Rosson.
Officers claimed that employment land would be lost at the site, which is located south of the Buckingham Industrial Estate and north of agricultural land.
The planning director said: “The proposed development for housing would result in loss of land allocated for employment use in the Buckingham Neighbourhood Development Plan (2015).”
Writing in his notice of refusal, he added: “The proposal fails to sufficiently demonstrate that there is no reasonable prospect of the site being used for appropriate employment purposes.”
The planning chief said the plans were also being refused because the site partly comprises a mineral safeguarding area.
He wrote: “In the absence of a mineral assessment, the proposal fails to demonstrate the non-mineral development would not needlessly sterilise mineral resources of local and national importance.”
Outline plans for the proposed development stated that some of the housing would be affordable and that building would take place across three different parcels of land.
The southern part of the site was proposed as a landscape buffer area, leading into the countryside to the south.
This would have included a public open space, play areas, recreational routes and ‘attenuation basins’.