Council officers recommend more flats for the Archery Ground and cutting compensation

Planning officers of Hastings Borough Council (HBC) have recommended that the Council accepts the application to squeeze five more flats onto the Archery Ground site. They also propose to let over £53,000 compensation go unclaimed without explaining why. The legal argument is badly out of date. Consideration of disabled rights has been suppressed as well as ignored. The application will be decided by the planning committee on Wednesday 12 March. Bernard McGinley reports.

The reputation of HBC for low standards and bad management continues to grow. Archery Ground case HS/FA/24/00549 is finally coming to the Planning Committee on Wednesday 12 March, an application to add five more flats to a bloated scheme, cannibalising internal space. The matter was reported in HOT last summer.

The matter has been contentious for about 20 years, and was hard fought. The Save the Archery Ground (STAG) campaign was not about the principle of housing there but opposed to the impact of the proposals:  the predominance of small, cramped flats, off-the-shelf designs, incongruous use of modern materials and a general lack of distinctiveness, innovation and quality. Now the space is recommended for 117 instead of the previous 112 dwellings. Perhaps that would be acceptable if the design were good but the details are vague, as before.

The committee report for case 549 recommends Grant Full Planning Permission but doesn’t explain why. The proposed additions are four 1-bed flats (one a studio flat) and one 2-bed flat. Design details are unavailable, which is peculiar. Procedural requirements are ducked. The impression grows that this is not what good planning looks like, and that the Council lacks any sense of overdevelopment.

Goodbye £53k

HBC has a policy (H3) on affordable housing for development proposals, or compensation in certain circumstances. The committee report on the present case reports:

HBC Housing Officer — No objection subject to commuted sum being provided equivalent to 1.25 affordable housing units.

The HBC Housing Development Manager’s consultation submission stated that in the event of approval, the formula for compensation (including market evaluations) was worked out as:

Financial contribution required for 1.25 units is £150,000

adding

We require 3 x Estate Agent quotes to establish the open market value of the units.

However section 7 of the committee report recommends accepting a:

· Commuted sum of £96,667.5 as a contribution toward affordable housing.

How this was arrived at is unexplained, and there is no indication of any external input such as estates agents’ quotes. The shortfall (over £53k) is nowhere discussed. (Par 3.3 of Policy H3 states it is for the developer/applicant to supply the professional estimates. That has not happened.)

Disabled rights unreported and ignored

The loss of disabled parking spaces was prominent in public objections. Like traffic and overcrowding, it is not mentioned in the committee report. HBC seems to have a blind spot about the Equality Act and subsequent legislation, as the 2022 Harold Place ‘Mugsbro Lounge’ case showed.

‘Variation of condition’ again

James Burton’s Archery Ground survived until the late 1960s when the Council decided to put a college building there that they later described as having

no architectural quality that is worth preserving.

But worse was to follow for the St Leonards West Conservation Area. A long running dispute ended in planning cases HS/FA/13/00590 and HS/FA/15/00175 and lip service about goodwill. Extra flats could have been the subject of fresh applications, but that option was avoided in favour of variation under unsatisfactory Section 73 of the relevant Act: how many minor amendments make something else?

The Gemselect Archery Ground ‘variation of condition’ cases since 2015 are these:

HS/FA/15/00107               HS/FA/17/00439 HS/FA/18/00291              HS/FA/20/00369 HS/LB/20/00869            HS/FA/22/00635 HS/FA/24/00549.

Cumulatively this looks disrespectful (by Gemselect) and disreputable (by both the developer and the Council). Gemselect were politely asked to comment on the current application but did not respond.

Case law misdirection

The Council’s legal argument is professionally careless and beyond thin — essentially that the Armstrong case gives carte blanche. Unfortunately the cited case of Armstrong v SoS and Cornwall Council (2023) was followed by Fiske (Fiske, R (On the Application Of) v Test Valley Borough Council (2023)) which largely superseded it. The Court of Appeal ruling on Fiske upheld a High Court decision and underscored the limitations of Section 73 applications, indicating that they cannot be used to make significant changes that conflict with the original planning permission.

Report comments

Constraints of space prevent a fuller discussion of the faults of the case and the committee report. For the first time, officers have taken to commenting on their own report. The result is ugly. Section 4 on Representations is shouty, and terrible: bullet points on public concerns such as:

· The applicant has not engaged with neighbours. [Officer comment: public engagement is carried out as part of the planning process for this application]

{HOT comment: What public engagement? The report doesn’t say, and the Council is not known for its approachability, though the commitment to openness and transparency (lack of) is notorious.}

· Concerns about outlook and ‘right to light’ for future occupiers. [Officer note: the applicant has submitted a Daylight and Sunlight Report, see section f) in the assessment below

{There is less concern by the applicant for existing occupiers.}

· Greedy developer squeezing more development from the scheme. [Officer note: national government planning guidance encourages efficient use of land and buildings to meet housing need]

{National government planning guidance also encourages good design and conservation, and enforcement, but HBC doggedly ignore all that. One result is Azur, a Council-owned 21st-century slum. Another is HS/FA/07/00953 (Market Passage), with its many clear breaches of requirements.}

· Vehicle access via Archery Gardens. [Officer note: access to the parking area was always from both Archery Road and Archery Gardens as shown on the plans for the original planning permission]

{Information on traffic flow and use of the spiral ramps is scarce, and which original case is meant? Presumably 175.}

· Insufficient parking spaces to serve the development. [Officer note: Highways officers raise no objection, see section i) in the assessment below]

{While policy DM4 (General Access) of the Hastings Development Management Local Plan is invoked in section i)), the clear breach of DM4 f) is not, on good accessibility for all — especially for people with a disability.}

· Additional five flats will make Archery Gardens unsafe for children to play. [Officer note: Highways officers have confirmed the proposal would not impact on Highway safety, see section i) in the assessment below]

{The comment misses the point: while there is no absolute safety, more traffic makes the Gardens more unsafe.}

HBC’s treatment of the Archery Ground has been called a helical Horlicks, patent overdevelopment. Still they try to make it worse.

Meeting

The Planning Committee is on Wednesday 12 March at 6 p.m., livestreamed. Whether members will reject the recommendation and seek some cogent answers is not knowable.

When the base case (HS/FA/15/00175) was being considered, the committee report declared:

Given however the site contains a listed building, and that it lies adjacent to a particularly important conservation area, it is considered that any development within this site needs to be of a particularly high standard of design, as was very much the case when the previous application (HS/FA/13/00590) was approved.

This present application (HS/FA/24/00549) is not to that ‘particularly high standard of design’. It is patently a squeeze job, and not compatible with that earlier permission now proposed for yet another variation on a stealthy discredited theme.

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