A Changing Emphasis For Greenfield Protection Against Housing Development

Cheshire East Council is understandably pleased with the three very recent decisions from central Government that have rejected housing schemes on green-field sites in the Borough. These come after the raft of 2014 decisions where Permissions were granted for just this type of proposal.

The constant across the decisions - both rejections and approvals – is that the Borough hasn't been able to prove that it has the required five years supply of housing land.

So why the variation in outcome? Isn't just the case that everyone agrees that Britain needs more houses, and where a Council can't show it has enough land the default answer to new proposals is 'yes'? Well, the answer to that is obviously 'no'.