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Search the Public Notice PortalThe government has agreed to put the brakes on controversial plans to build two mammoth warehouses on a stretch of green belt land bordering the borough of Blackburn with Darwen, after being petitioned by the local MP.
Chorley Council officers had recommended that the planning committee, which is meeting on Tuesday evening (June 16), approves the application to build the warehouses, which would reach 70ft (21.3m) in height – making them as tall as the Sphinx in Egypt.
The application from local firm FI Real Estate Management Limited has triggered around 300 objections from residents concerned about the impact of the 120,000sqm logistics warehouses, after a similar 60ft warehouse was approved in Wigan but ended up looming over a nearby estate.
As the project is taking place just metres from Chorley’s border with Blackburn with Darwen, the area’s MP, Adnan Hussain, made several representations and wrote to the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government and laid out why the development could harm his constituents.
In his letter, the Blackburn MP said: “Whilst the application site lies within Chorley Council's administrative area, I have received a significant volume of correspondence from Blackburn residents who believe they will be directly affected by the proposal.
“Residents from Livesey, Pleasington, Feniscowles, Cherry Tree and surrounding communities have contacted me raising concerns about the impact on traffic, green belt land, local wildlife, landscape, public safety and quality of life.”
He added that councillors in Chorley would be deciding on the development, but ‘many of the consequences’ will actually be felt by people living within Blackburn with Darwen.
In his letter, he argued that the warehouse application was not an ordinary planning matter, stating: “It is a proposal for a major logistics development on green belt land immediately adjoining Blackburn, raising questions about national planning policy, cross-boundary impacts, heritage protection, landscape harm, public safety, and critical infrastructure.”
And in an eleventh-hour intervention following representations from the local MP, the government has now stepped in and issued a rare Article 31 Direction, under the Town and Country Planning Order 2015, to Chorley Council.
Effectively, this means that the outcome of tonight’s planning meeting over the warehouses will be deferred to the department’s Secretary of State, Steve Reed MP, and the Planning Inspectorate.
This does not prevent Chorley’s planning committee from reviewing the application and coming to a view on it, nor does it reflect the final opinion of the Secretary of State, with whom the power to approve the application now lies.
Blackburn’s MP said that this rare decision from the department was ‘a big win’ for his constituents. “It’s power to the people. It shows that when they lobby their representative, they get results,” Hussain said in reaction to the Article 31 Direction.
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