A BITTER row between a housing developer and Barnsley Council about driveways has escalated and shows no sign of being resolved.
Gleeson Homes has built hundreds of homes on numerous sites across Barnsley and has laid driveways largely of gravel, rather than a solid-bound material. This breaches the conditions of its planning permission and the developer has lost five planning appeals against Barnsley Council in which it sought permission to continue laying gravel driveways.
The Chronicle reported in December that Gleeson would be ‘pulling out’ of Barnsley as a result of the council’s approach.
Now the head of planning at Barnsley Council has told councillors on the planning committee the builder had submitted a revised specification for driveways, but that planning officers had told them this still wasn’t acceptable, and the plan was to issue ‘breach of condition notices’.
He also said if the firm did not ‘get its act together’ in the next few months, ‘stop notices’ would be issued preventing the firm building any more houses.
A fiery statement from Gleeson Homes issued to the Chronicle says the council ought to ‘think about the consequences of their threats’ and warned of a backlash against the council.
“It does not come as a surprise that we have heard about this through the Chronicle rather than the council contacting us directly,” said the spokesman.
“They have our email address and it would be common courtesy and good manners to convey their intentions directly, rather than let the local press do it; this is typical of the dismissive and aggressive way that Barnsley deal with businesses that have invested tens of millions in regeneration work. Future investors should be warned.
“We invite the council to serve breach of condition notices and to prosecute us so that a judge can decide whether our revised driveway specification that is supported by the Environment Agency is acceptable or not. Barnsley obviously think that the Environment Agency are wrong, a judge will disagree.
“If the council issues stop notices a number of young first time buyers will be deprived of their new homes and existing residents will be living on sites with unmade roads. There will be a justifiable backlash against the council; they really ought to think about the consequences of their threats. There is a serious competence issue here.
“The council have dug themselves into a deep hole with this issue and we wonder if rate payers will be happy about Barnsley spending their time and money in pursuing a housing regeneration developer who has invested millions in the area who are trying to build houses to a good environmental standard.
“We intend to fight this to its conclusion.”
Council spokesman Coun Roy Miller said: “Following the appeal decisions, in which the planning inspector rejected all of the arguments that Gleeson Homes put forward to substantiate their driveway specification including their assertion that it complies with Environment Agency advice, the council wrote to Gleeson Homes to seek a revised driveway specification.
“In that correspondence we made it clear that if a specification was not provided within a reasonable timescale or if the specification was deemed unacceptable we would serve breach of condition notices.
“Regrettably, the driveway specification that was recently presented to us does not address the reasons why the Planning Inspector dismissed the various planning appeals. This has been relayed to Gleeson Homes with a request made for a revised specification.
“To date we have not resorted to serving notices that would stop further development on these sites as we are keen to see housing being delivered, but this is an option that remains open to us if Gleeson Homes will not remedy the breaches of planning control.
“Ultimately, we do hope that the matter can be resolved amicably but the use of enforcement powers is entirely legitimate in situations where a developer will not accept appeal decisions that were made entirely independent of Barnsley Council.”
