While most of the film industry is gearing up for the awards season, one of the country’s best known studios has had its hopes of its most coveted award dashed.
Pinewood Shepperton, home to the Bond films and producer of Oscar favourite The Iron Lady, had been working on plans to develop 100 acres at its Buckinghamshire base for almost five years.
The £200m scheme had proposed 200,000 sq ft of commercial space and 1,400 homes in the form of permanent, live-in film lots, depicting scenes from cities around the world.
First proposed in 2007, Project Pinewood aimed to create the first live-work film and television community and creative industries cluster, and help the UK studio compete with its US counterparts.
But the location of the scheme led to protests from South Buckinghamshire district council and local campaigners, who claimed the plans would lead to a destruction of the green belt. They likened the project to building a Disneyland in the English countryside.
Plans were first rejected in 2009 and went to public inquiry last spring. But, despite years of opposing Project Pinewood, the council made the surprise move of withdrawing its objections, raising hopes that the extension would finally get the go ahead.
Boost for film industry
Such a move could have provided as many as 1,000 jobs, and helped to boost the depressed UK film industry, which has suffered as a result of the government’s austerity measures.
Indeed, earlier this month, prime minister David Cameron visited Pinewood to beat the drum for the industry ahead of a policy review designed to make recommendations to bolster the £4.2bn sector.
But last week, communities minister Eric Pickles refused consent for the project and instead chose to protect the country’s green belt.
Pickles found that the scheme would harm the environment, and was not in line with local development plans.
As well as delighting local campaigners, Pickles’ decision may also go some way to alleviate fears from bodies such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England that the government’s proposed National Planning Policy Framework could lead to widespread destruction of the country’s fields and villages.
CPRE believes that as much as 2,885 acres of greenfield land could be handed over for development under the NPPF.
However, Pickles’ refusal shows that the government will only allow development on green belt if it has an economically sound justification.
“Urban sprawl”
He said that Project Pinewood would “amount to urban sprawl of the type the green belt is seeking to contain”, and that the site is “an inherently unsustainable location”.
“The benefits of the proposal do not clearly outweigh the harm to the green belt,” said Pickles, “and very special circumstances to justify development in the green belt do not exist”.
Pinewood, which has spent close to £8m on the project, says that it is taking time to “review the decision in detail”, but with the option of appeal not left open for the film studio, it seems almost certain that the £200m extension will be left on the cutting room floor.
