Following a long process, including an unsuccessful appeal, a successful High Court challenge, and a redetermination under the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), outline planning permission has been granted for 62 dwellings on the edge of Rutland Water in the scenic Rutland village of Edith Weston.
The original planning application was submitted in 2022 but was not determined within the statutory timeframe. The Council initially set out that, were it able to, it would have refused the application on the sole basis that the site lay outside the settlement boundary and was therefore contrary to Policies CS4, CS9, and SP6 of the development plan.
At that stage, the Council was able to demonstrate a five-year housing land supply. In the normal course of events, where a local authority can demonstrate a five-year land supply, the adverse impacts of a development need only outweigh the benefits.
At the time, it was our argument that the supply included a significant number of dwellings on unallocated sites which were granted planning permission contrary to policies CS4, CS9 and SP6 predominantly as a result of the Council being unable to demonstrate a sufficient supply of housing. The reliance on unallocated countryside sites clearly demonstrated that, were housing only approved in line with the constraints set out by policies CS4, CS9 and SP6, the Council would have been unable to deliver its required housing numbers. Polices CS4, CS9 and SP6 therefore ran contrary to the Framework’s objective of significantly boosting the supply of homes and were out of date.
The appeal proceeded but was dismissed in November 2023, with the Inspector concluding that the policies were not out of date and the Council’s position was sound.
We challenged the decision in the High Court, resulting in a Consent Order quashing the appeal decision in March 2024. The Secretary of State accepted that the Inspector had failed to properly consider whether CS9 still provided a mechanism to allow for site release. In reality, it did not—the policy relied on site allocations that had already been made and the mechanism afforded by CS9 had, in effect, been 'spent'.
Before the case was reconsidered, the Government published revisions to the NPPF in December 2024, significantly increasing the Council’s housing requirement from 123 to 266 dwellings per annum.
Central to the changes is the irrefutable fact that we are in the middle of the “an acute and entrenched housing crisis. The average new home is out of reach for the average worker, housing costs consume a third of private renters’ income, and the number of children in temporary accommodation now stands at a historic high of nearly 160,000. Yet just 220,000 new homes were built last year and the number of homes granted planning permission has fallen to its lowest in a decade.”
Due to previous underdelivery, the Council was also required to add a 20% buffer to its supply. The result was a requirement of 320 homes per year and confirmation that the Council could no longer demonstrate a five-year housing land supply (2.96 years). That engaged Paragraph 11(d) of the NPPF, meaning planning permission should be granted unless the adverse impacts of doing so would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits. This ‘tilted balance’ has been designed to authorise harm because of the importance the Government places on housing delivery. The Council ultimately conceded it could no longer justify refusal, withdrawing its opposition before the appeal was determined.
The Inspector issued a decision in February 2025, allowing the appeal and confirming that the development would provide much-needed housing, including affordable homes and self-build plots, in an area where supply was failing to meet demand.
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