Lawyers representing the parish council of a small Suffolk village have failed to persuade a London judge to stop developers from building a housing development near them.
Galliard Homes has been given planning permission by Babergh District Council to build a 260-dwelling development on a derelict naval base on the Shotley Peninsular near Ipswich. As well as houses, it also plans to build a nursing home, a doctors surgery, shops and offices.
In a hearing yesterday, lawyers representing the parish council of the nearby village of Woolveston said the development was not in accordance with the local development plan and the decision to award it was “irrational”.
The parish council says that the site is unsuitable for a housing development because there is only one small B road going in and out of the peninsular and it cannot support the volume of traffic the development will create.
However, in a ruling today, Patterson J disagreed. Although the development was not in accordance with the development plan, the council’s planning committee was entitled to take other factors into account and make their own decision, she said.
The development site is on an old naval base called HMS Ganges. The base was used for training recruits between 1905 and 1976, but has been derelict for years.
The whole site is a conservation area, and includes a number of of heritage assets, including two Martello towers, a mast, and the remains of a fort.
A planning report submitted to the committee said that the site was deteriorating through lack of use. The judge said that the council was no behaving irrationally when they considered whether the “deteriorating heritage assets could be saved by development”, she said.
“The decision was rightly regarded as finely balanced. The decision was not irrational,” she added.