The Report by Calderdale Council’s Head of Planning and Highways recommends refusal of the planning application 12/01003/FUL, Construction of retail store, five storey hotel and hydro electric power station on the former Mytholm Works site in Hebden Bridge.
The Report has been prepared for Councillors on the Planning Committee. This will consider the Mytholm Works planning application at the 4th December Planning Committee meeting, in Halifax Town Hall. The meeting starts at 6pm.
Reasons for recommending refusal
In brief, the Officer’s reasons for recommending refusal are that the application is contrary to planning guidelines that aim to protect:
- the vitality and viability of town centres
- biodiversity and the ecology of the aquatic environment
The Officer’s Report should be on the Calderdale Council website, but when I checked it hadn’t yet been uploaded. So the Planning department emailed me the Planning__Committee_Officer’s Report_-_4th_December_2012.
(If you download the Report, please note that 2.1 says that the enclosed report contains two sections: one a summarised list of all applications to be considered at the Planning Committee meeting; the second, individual detailed reports for the applications to be considered. But the report that Calderdale Planning department has emailed contains only the listing and detailed report for the Mytholm Works application. The others have been deleted.)
A direct copy-and-paste from the Officer’s Report follows:
“Reasons 1. The site is a substantial distance from the primary and secondary shopping frontage of Hebden Bridge and, given the scale of the proposals, it is considered that the development is likely to function as a freestanding retail destination, with limited linked trips to the town centre. Criterion Ai) of the Replacement Calderdale Unitary Development Plan Policy S2, Criteria for Assessing Retail Developments, requires that retail proposals relate to the role, scale and character of the centre and the catchment the development is proposed to serve, and criterion Biii) requires that there will be no serious effect (either on its own or cumulatively with other similar permissions) upon the vitality and viability of any nearby town centre as a whole. Whilst the proposal would deliver a supermarket that would improve choice, competition and the quality of the convenience retail offer of Hebden Bridge, insufficient information has been submitted to demonstrate that the application would have an acceptable impact on the vitality and viability of Hebden Bridge Town Centre. In the absence of sufficient information to demonstrate that it would have an acceptable impact, it is considered that the application is contrary to Replacement Calderdale Unitary Development Plan Policy S2 and guidance contained within Section 2, Ensuring the vitality of town centres, of the National Planning Policy Framework. 2.
Insufficient information has been submitted to demonstrate the impact of the development on biodiversity. In the absence of sufficient information the application is contrary to Replacement Calderdale Unitary Development Plan policies NE15 Development in Wildlife Corridors, NE16 Protection of Protected Species and guidance contained within Section 11 Conserving and enhancing the natural environment of the National Planning Policy Framework. Furthermore, insufficient information has been submitted to demonstrated that the hydropower element of the proposals would not be harmful to the ecology of the aquatic environment, and the application in this regard is therefore also contrary to Replacement Calderdale Unitary Development Plan policies NE18 Ecological Protection of Water Areas, and EP28 Development of Renewable Energy Sources, and guidance contained within Section 11 Conserving and enhancing the natural environment of the National Planning Policy Framework.”
The Officer’s Report reviews all aspects of the planning application.
I disagree with its assessment that the proposed micro-hydro power station complies with Policy EP 27 (Renewable Energy in New Developments). The developer’s proposal for the micro-hydro power station makes big claims for the scheme’s potential, but doesn’t provide facts that would support these claims.
4th December Planning committee meeting agenda
The agenda is now online, along with the planning applications list which contains the officer’s reports on the applications.
I to am pleased to see some sense by the planning officer and show great concern for the biodiversity issues mentioned by the officer in summary.
The opening up of the now disused goit (pus 1.5Km of pipe) will see a huge depleted stretch of water where the ecology of the river will die again as it did when the mill was first running. All those years of repair to now go backwards and leave a denuded dry riverbed. Slowed or dry rivers do not make for good news. We are only 1degree away from losing some of our invertebrate species. With these will go the bats, birds and fish. Sediments will ‘drop out’ in the wrong place and habitats and ecosystem services will be disrupted.
The Trust does support renewable energy that is fully considered and mitigated for but the proposed system at this site falls far short at first glance. Remember, that whilst the water is renewable the river is not
I am delighted by these recommendarions, which reflect my own view that a thoroughgoing independent economic impact assessment ought to have taken place before the application was submitted, as the proposals are likely to have such a huge effect on the local economy.
I hope that the local commnity and the developers can now talk about a suitable commercial use for the site.
I am glad the Officer’s report comes down in favour of a rejection of the application and can imagine that the recent refusal by The Planning Inspector of the ASDA Halifax Road supermarket in Todmorden on the same grounds, as in its impact on the ‘vitality and viability’ of the town centre has emboldened our local planners.This does not mean to say that the landowners will not lodge an Appeal, as they did in Tod. I have long taken the postition that good planning takes an overview of what happens in all our Calder Valley communities, so that what takes place in Hebden clearly relates to events or plans for Todmorden and so on. Maybe our planners and politicians are also getting this important message. I do hope so.