Vanwall Business Park plan for 91 flats to go to appeal

Plans to turn a 3,000sqm office into 91 flats are to go to appeal after the council failed to make a decision in time.

Councillors were conflicted about whether to permit 91 flats in Vanwall Business Park and discussed it at the Maidenhead Development Panel on Wednesday – despite being unable to have the final say on the plans.

The application seeks to redevelop the ‘protected employment site’ to provide 91 new homes in two blocks with a mix of studio to three-bedroom homes.

These are a mixed tenure of private, shared ownership and affordable.

Developer Bellway Homes Ltd proposed to demolish the existing building on the site, Mattel House, a 3,086sqm two-storey office.

The homes were to be made up of 29 one-bed flats, 54 two-bed flats and eight three-bed flats, with 91 car parking spaces and 94 bicycle spaces.

The plans had previously been called ‘excessive’ by Maidenhead Civic Society.

At the committee on February 16, councillors were concerned by the potential loss of employment at the site.

Councillor Gurpreet Bhangra (Con, Boyn Hill) said he thought it would be ‘detrimental’ to the area.

Of particular worry is the loss of large companies, like the toy company Mattel, from the site.

Cllr Bhangra also raised concerns that these would not be ‘high quality homes’ – fears echoed by other councillors. They wanted to see homes of ‘the right size, the right quality and the right design.’

Cllr David Coppinger (Con, Bray) said there are ‘enough flats’ in Maidenhead and there is a critical shortage of family homes.

“We have got so many young people trying to get a start who can’t,” he said.

But Cllr Joshua Reynolds (Lib Dem, Furze Platt said this was ‘not realistically’ a matter of building offices or flats.

He saw this as a choice only between two flat developments – this one, or another application for the same site that has already been granted prior approval.

This other option offers 28 rather than 91 residences with ‘no amenity space’ (planning reference 21/02067).

If the 91-flat plan could have been legitimately refused by the council, it is likely that the developers would have reverted to the original 28-flat scheme.

Officers were minded to recommend rejecting the newer application – and the committee voted unanimously to say that they would have supported this.

However, the final decision ultimately lies with the Planning Inspectorate. This application is the subject of a non-determination appeal, meaning it passed the time limit in which the council can make a decision.

If the local authority does not issue a decision within the time limit – in this case, 13 weeks – the applicant has a right to appeal to the Secretary of State, where it is out of the Borough’s hands.

The planning application was submitted on May 25, 2022. The due date for a decision was therefore August 24.

As such, Bellway Homes submitted an appeal to the planning inspectorate on February 1.

The company considered that it had been ‘provided a poor level of service whereby the proposals ha[d] not been considered robustly by officers.’

“No reasons have been cited by the Royal Borough as prospective reasons for refusal,” Bellway wrote.

A council spokesperson said: “The council has been carefully considering this application, which raises a number of complex issues, however, as no decision had been made within the specific timeframe, the applicant has chosen to exercise their right to submit a non-determination appeal.

“The council cannot formally issue a decision as the applicant has lodged an appeal against non-determination of the application.

“In these circumstances, as a major application that would usually go to committee, the council will still take a report to that committee to agree what the formal position would’ve been, if the committee had been able to determine the application.”

UPDATE: In a previous version of this article, the Advertiser reported that the committee had made a decision on this application. In fact, the Royal Borough could not make a final decision at the Wednesday meeting because the application was subject to a non-determination appeal.