Like us on
Follow us
Seashell Trust submits evidence in readiness for May planning appeal hearing
Seashell Trust has submitted its evidence to the appointed planning inspector in the appeal against the decision of Stockport Council to refuse permission for a school and campus transformation on the site at Cheadle Hulme.
The Board of Trustees of Seashell Trust, which provides education and support for children and young adults with extremely complex disabilities, saw its evidence lodged with the Planning inspectorate against the decision of the council to refuse permission for the campus transformation and associated cross‐funding residential development.
Seashell Trust Chief Executive Jolanta McCall explained: “We were incredibly disappointed with Stockport Council’s decision to refuse our application which would see us create a desperately needed new school and campus here at Seashell and believe that the decision the planning committee took was the wrong one.
“We spent over two years preparing our original application, we answered every question asked of us and we believe we demonstrated very special circumstances would allow us to secure planning permission on the site.”
The application was recommended for approval by planning officers but was refused by the planning committee at the beginning of 2018 and Seashell took the decision to appeal against the decision. The appeal will now be heard by a Planning Inspector at an inquiry which is due to start on 8 May 2019.
The parties were required to submit their evidence to the Inspector this week. The Trust applied for a new school and campus transformation which would be funded in part by the sale of land with planning permission for around 325 homes on Green Belt land owned by the Trust.
A meeting of the Planning Committee voted to refuse planning permission for the scheme because they said the very special circumstances needed to justify development on Green Belt land had not been met and that the housing element of the scheme did not include enough affordable housing.
The decision followed more than two years of work to develop the application which had been recommended for approval by planning officers from Stockport Council. The inquiry is scheduled to take up to six weeks
