Responding to Planning Applications

Why is this?

Cumbria (made up of Westmorland and Furness Council and Cumberland Council) is a large county. It’s also highly biodiverse, with large areas protected by law (such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Special Areas of Concern and Ramsar Sites).

Even larger areas are protected by multi-purpose designations (the Lake District and Westmorland Dales National Parks, the Arnside and Silverdale, North Pennines and Solway Coast National Landscapes (formerly known as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty), so that the areas in which significant development might occur are restricted.

Development pressure in Cumbria is low and mostly consists of individual private applications, such as extensions to existing buildings, which have little or no impact on wildlife.

Housing developments

The areas in which housing development applications can take place are defined by policies and allocations in the Local Plan. They have been screened for biodiversity impacts during plan development. They tend to be immediately next to towns and villages on ”green fields”.

There’s a popular misconception that such fields are valuable for their wildlife, but in reality, most are very poor. Agricultural policies in the past mean that most consist of a very limited number of plant species and therefore few birds, mammals or invertebrates, with those present being both common and widespread.

Any significant application now has to come with an assessment of its ecological impacts. These vary in quality, but normally give at least a reasonable idea of the likely impacts of a development on wildlife.

When and why we oppose

Major developments that have significant impacts on wildlife are rare, and where they do occur we oppose them. We do this vigorously and regularly, where we have good and legally-arguable evidence that the impacts in specific cases are likely to be significantly harmful to the interests of wildlife and the environment.

Cumbria Wildlife Trust isn’t a statutory consultee, therefore we’re not automatically included by planning authorities in any planning consultation. We often have to rely on our members or partner organisations bringing them to our attention.

We have very limited resources and capacity available to engage with many of the planning management and control cases across Cumbria. We don’t have dedicated staff who can work through weekly planning lists, and so we tend to have to carefully prioritise our efforts on cases where there is a serious impact on important sites and/or species. This regrettably means we can’t engage in every development across Cumbria even though, in an ideal world, we would actually like to try to influence them all. 

Additionally, our charitable purposes require us to focus our attention very specifically on the impacts of development on the nature conservation and environmental impacts on a particular site and/or how it might impact on the opportunities for nature recovery and/or on how people’s access and enjoyment of nature might be affected. 

As an organisation, we’re required to base our comments, views and interventions on the measurable evidence of impacts on the ecology of a development at a specific site, as a result of a specific proposal. Obviously the arguments against are set in the context of how the proposal relates to the prevailing planning policies and Local Plan frameworks. 

We don’t object to developments where we don’t have specific material evidence of significant impact on which we can object to the development (i.e. it’s not an SSSI or County Wildlife Site and we’re not aware of any protected species records).

There are many good and valid reasons why developments are damaging and should be opposed and fought but in terms of our involvement, it has to be based on evidence of ecological impacts only. 

Other organisations do have a wider remit and can consider other issues and can cover such things as landscape and aesthetics, transport, local services and facilities and so forth.

We often work with partners when responding to large or complex planning applications that are going to have large scale negative impacts so that we can maximise the impact of our response and coordinate and share the workload.

If you have concerns with how we handle planning applications, you may wish to become a member (if you’re not already). You’d be welcome to join us at our AGM and raise it as an issue, or write to our CEO.

Are you concerned about a planning application in Cumbria?

Here are some things to bear in mind, before you object:

1. Look at which authority is making the decision. If you're in a National Park it will either be the Lake District National Park Authority or the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority. Outside of national parks, it's now either Westmorland and Furness Council or Cumberland Council.
2. Look at the Local Plan on the council website. It should show which policies and land allocations are relevant to the application. A development is much more likely to be rejected if it is against plan policies or is on land not previously allocated for that use.
3. Think about all the “human” reasons that concern you about the application. These might be issues around flooding, road capacity, noise, lighting and so on. The planning system was created by people, to deal with conflicting human needs. Developments are usually turned down because they conflict with other human needs. They're only rarely turned down on grounds of their impact on the natural environment and usually this is where there is significant impact on protected sites or species.
4. Read the supporting documents that come with the application. Most substantial applications will have some kind of ecology report. These vary in quality quite a lot, but mostly they give some idea as to what habitats and species are on site and how they might be affected by the development.
5. Talk to your local councillor, express to them why you're opposed to the development.
6. Understand where the local authority sits in all this. The authority creates the Local Plan and in effect acts as “referee” in the planning process, adjudicating between the wishes of the developer and those of the objectors.
7. Keep calm – you may feel passionately about this planning application but you won’t help your case by losing your temper.
8. Be honest about the threat to wildlife that you believe will be caused by the planning application.