So for all the developer's private oral rubbishing of the previously refused application, the leopard hasn't changed its spots. Still the naked grab for the whole site for luxury housing it always was, first on the north west corner and then, once the bowling club and token gym again failed, the rest of site.
They did everything they could to prevent formal word of the appeal leaking out whilst the developer tried to lull the community into a false sense of security and accept a substantial luxury housing development on the site. First, they kept the appeal back to the very last days of the six month notice period. Second, they then engineered a delay in the publication of the public notice about the appeal.
Fortunately a combination of delays in Generator's new 'engagement' process and pressure to publish the appeal notice before the exact date of the Inspector's public local inquiry is settled has produced the above formal and public confirmation of the appeal within hours of the second 'engagement' meeting.
The position couldn't be clearer. We must, and DPCAAC will, mount a robust and single-minded defence of the Council's planning policies for the Mansfield site in the months running up to the Inspector's public local inquiry and at the inquiry itself. The site has been used for open space sport leisure activities for well over a hundred years since Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts first made it available to the community and it must continue to do so. It also plays a key role in preserving the character of our Conservation Area. You simply can't do that properly without root and branch opposition to the new proposals. You can't ride two horses at the same time. If agreed, these new proposals would drive a coach and horses through the Council's planning policies for the site and that will compromise our ability to defend the original refusal at the appeal.
The fact of the appeal gives the lie to the barrage of highly deniable oral rubbishing of the original application. Until and unless all these remarks are on the record they are meaningless. The appeal isn't "purely a formality". MBC Ltd will have a team of expensive lawyers and others paid for by Generator arguing its case for overturning the Council's refusal of permission to develop eight luxury houses on the north eastern end of the site over the bowling green and tennis courts. They will defend the eviction of the tennis club. They won't be conceding that the viability case for the indoor bowling with the addition is "hopelessly flawed".
It will, though, help our defence of the Council's original refusal if we can force some of these remarks onto the record and into the public domain.
Accepting the case for a substantial luxury housing development on the south western end of the site could come back to haunt us. The Developer could, for example, simply bank that acceptance and any permission which followed it, fight the appeal and, if they won, build the first eight houses, pause briefly while it becomes obvious that the bowling club/gym doesn't have a future, and then say, 'sorry the Inspector said we could build on the open space so it isn't available any more, the bowling club venture has failed and you did say it was OK to develop the clubhouse site for luxury housing so we will have an amended permission please'. There are, of course, many variations on this theme. Fanciful? Think Athlone House, permission given for a block of flats on condition that Athlone House was refurbished. We have the block of flats and the developer has walked away with a huge profit but Athlone House hasn't been refurbished and the new owner has been running legal rings around the Council ever since.
Anyway, the reality is would be pretty much impossible to put the inadequate open space offered out of harms in perpetuity.
It isn't as if what has so far been proposed in this new round of 'engagement' is offering anything remotely acceptable to the great majority of the community. They haven't even accepted the most basic and obvious requirement that the replacement pavilion must be built within the footprint of the clubhouse. There is nothing to be gained and much to be lost in our speculating in public at this point what might be acceptable. Time enough, after the appeal has been withdrawn or defeated, to engage if the developer comes forward with much much more modest 'enabling' development.
One key to the defence of the site at the appeal is demonstrating the continued importance to the community and, perhaps, viability of the current sport leisure use (or, at least, of some like use which delivers equivalent benefit in enhancing community the well-being) of the south western end of the site. This doesn't, of course, mean we have to try to follow the developer down the hopeless road of trying to defend that ugly white elephant of a clubhouse.
Another very significant consequence of the appeal is that it means that there is no longer, at this point, anything significant for the community to try to buy/bid for under the relevant provisions of the Localism . Before the Mansfield site was designated an asset of community value (a fact which is itself a 'material consideration' helping to justifying a refusal of planning permission), MBC Ltd had already sold the north east part of the site to Generator. This sale took the form of an 'option', that is to say the land will automatically pass from MBC Ltd to Generator if planning permission is granted. Had the appeal not been launched the 'option' would have died with the Council's refusal of planning permission but it has now been revived by the appeal. Until the appeal is finally defeated Generator effectively owns the land and MBC Ltd can't sell it too anyone else. Obviously the community wouldn't want the site without these key bits. Equally obviously, whilst there is nothing significant to buy, it wouldn't be possible raise the finance to buy it.
The only 'sale' possible is a further/alternative deal between MBC Ltd and Generator and any such purchase would almost certainly have to be conditional on them getting planning permission. The reality is that the community won't have a meaningful opportunity to bid for the site unless/until the developers have unsuccessfully exhausted all hope of getting planning permission.
Our job is, as it has always been, to defeat these unacceptable proposals in all their forms and to do that effectively we need to unite around a single clear and uncluttered case.
