Bristol City Council: After a lengthy saga, Dan Wilden is pleased to have finally secured planning permission for a new house on a back land site in the Southmead area of Bristol adjacent to the hospital. The scheme was designed by Bristol-based Richard Pedlar Architects.
We have been working on this site for years, initially attempting to gain consent for part of three residential rear gardens to be used as a small private car park for staff at the neighbouring Southmead Hospital. This was ultimately turned down on appeal due to incompatibility with the Council’s sustainable transport policies. However the Inspector did not object to the use of the access which opened up the potential for the access to be used for something else – the obvious answer being a new house.
We submitted an outline planning application but due to complete inaction on the case by the Council, our client was effectively forced to pursue an appeal against the non-determination of the application. The appeal itself took a long time and frustratingly was dismissed. However the only issue was a technicality – at a late stage the Council indicated that they would have granted permission but subject to a payment towards a Traffic Regulation Order to amend a parking space on the street. As our client could not arrange this in time, the appeal was dismissed on this basis. The only consolation was that despite losing the appeal we did win our client costs against the Council.
With this appeal decision, we could be confident that the same or similar scheme would be approved so our client proceeded with a full planning application. This time we did manage to get some action from the Council and despite a few further delays the full planning application was successful.
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