1. How Planning Officers and Committees Assess Applications
Planning Officers and Planning Committees are required to assess:
- whether a proposal aligns with the adopted spatial strategy and settlement hierarchy;
- whether the impacts are acceptable and capable of mitigation; and
A proposal may deliver housing but still be unacceptable if it:
- undermines the settlement hierarchy,
- overloads existing infrastructure, or
- relies on uncertain or future mitigation outside the applicant’s control.
2. Eccleshall – Scale and Settlement Context
- Eccleshall has a population of approximately 5,000. Proposal would add around 1,400 people, an increase of circa 20%.
- Eccleshall village covers roughly 750,000 sqm; the site extends approximately 250,000 sqm, increasing the village footprint by around one third.
- This represents strategic-scale development, typically associated with major urban extensions rather than sustainable village growth.
Within the Plan for Stafford Borough 2011–2031:
- Eccleshall is identified as a Key Service Village.
- The Plan directs the majority of growth to Stafford, a smaller proportion to Stone, and only a collective modest share across all Key Service Villages.
The Borough’s total housing requirement is 10,000 dwellings.
Only 12% (around 1,200 dwellings) were intended across all Key Service Villages combined.
This single proposal would deliver around 40% of that entire village allocation in one settlement.
This represents:
- an unplanned redistribution of growth,
- a disproportionate burden on one community, and
- a clear departure from the spatial strategy.
This scale cannot reasonably be described as “organic village growth”. It constitutes a step-change in settlement size, role and infrastructure demand.
3. Five-Year Housing Land Supply and Housing Delivery Test (Explained Simply)
Five-Year Housing Land Supply
Local authorities must demonstrate sufficient deliverable housing sites to meet their housing requirement over the next five years. Stafford Borough currently falls short of this test.
However, the Borough has over-delivered housing overall since 2011 and the shortfall is largely a timing and pipeline issue, not a lack of allocated land.
Housing Delivery Test (HDT)
The Housing Delivery Test measures how many homes have actually been built over the previous three years compared to the requirement.
Stafford Borough has passed the Housing Delivery Test, meaning it is not failing to deliver housing in practice.
From a Planning Officer’s perspective, this is important because:
- it demonstrates that housing delivery is occurring; and
- it reduces the weight that can be placed on arguments that any large housing scheme must be approved regardless of location.
Using a village-edge strategic scheme to address a borough-wide timing issue is therefore a poor fit and risks undermining the plan-led system.
4. National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)
The NPPF introduces a presumption in favour of sustainable development where policies are out of date. However, this is not a blank cheque.
The “tilted balance” only applies where:
- adverse impacts do not significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits.
In this case, when sustainability is considered as a whole, significant concerns arise due to:
- limited transport choice,
- infrastructure uncertainty, and
