Housebuilder Gladman Developments has won another chance to convince planning authorities to allow it to build a 70-home development on green belt land in Strathblane, Stirlingshire.
Scotland’s Court of Session ruled that a planning Reporter erred in a recommendation blocking the development.
This means that Gladman will get another chance to make its case for the project.
Gladman wants to build the homes and a new cemetery on the 11ha site, south of Campsie Road, Strathblane. The project has been at the planning stage for at least two years.
In November 2017 Stirling Council rejected the plan, after receiving more than 80 objections.
At the time, the council’s planning and regulation chairman, Alasdair MacPherson, said the development was “simply inappropriate.”
“Not only would this development have significantly impacted our green belt area, it would also have been detrimental to the historical site of the Broadgate Mound,” he said.
The mound is a Neolithic cairn.
Gladman appealed the decision, and a planning inquiry was held before a Reporter, the Scottish name for a planning inspector.
According to the ruling from the Court of Session, the main issue at the inquiry was whether the council had a five-year housing supply. Gladman contended it did not, the council contended it did. Both used different methods to assess the supply.
The Reporter rejected the appeal, as the council was able to prove it did have a five year supply.
However, Gladman appealed to the Court of Session which, in a ruling handed down last week, quashed the Reporter’s decision.
The court found that the Reporter hadn’t sufficiently considered which of the competing methodologies for five years’ supply should be used.
This error, according to Lord Menzies, who delivered the judgment, “went to the root of the only key issue” in the appeal.
It meant that “she was not in a position to contradict the council’s conclusion that a five-year effective housing land supply was currently being met”.
The appeal will now go back to another Reporter for reconsideration.
Gladman Developments Ltd – and – The Scottish Ministers
First Division, Inner House, Court of Session, (Lord President, Lord Menzies, Lord Brodie) 14 June 2019
