A grey belt appeal has allowed 51 affordable homes at Fleet Lane in Parr, St Helens, after an Inspector rejected two important elements of the council’s claimed five-year housing land supply. The decision was issued on 9 November 2026 following a hearing in October.
Inspector L N Hughes granted full planning permission for demolition of an existing bungalow and development of adjoining land, with open space and infrastructure. The proposal was brought by Breck Homes Ltd and Northern Trust Land Ltd after St Helens Borough Council refused application P/2025/0174/FUL.
The grey belt appeal matters beyond this site because the council claimed a 5.48-year supply while the developer argued for 3.63 years. The Inspector removed both a credit for earlier overdelivery and predicted homes at a major allocation, bringing the deliverable supply below five years and satisfying an important national grey belt test.
Why the grey belt appeal succeeded
The application began as 54 homes, was reduced to 52 during the council’s consideration and became 51 at appeal stage. The revised layout replaced a cul-de-sac with a looped estate road and amended the proposed maisonette block. The Inspector accepted the changes after considering whether the amendments were fair and procedurally permissible, referring to the High Court’s Holborn Studios judgment on amended applications and consultation.
The council’s refusal had originally contained six reasons, including highway, ecology, housing-mix and contribution issues. By the hearing, only the Green Belt reason remained contested. An executed section 106 agreement and revised material addressed the other objections sufficiently for the Inspector not to treat them as main issues.
Under the August 2026 National Planning Policy Framework, the Inspector first examined whether the site qualified as grey belt. Although the land was undeveloped, it was closely enclosed by the built-up area to its north, east and west. It did not strongly contribute to checking sprawl, preventing towns from merging or protecting the setting of historic towns, which are the relevant purposes in the current definition.
The grey belt appeal also required assessment of the wider Green Belt. The Inspector considered that building on this relatively small, self-contained parcel would not fundamentally undermine the remaining Green Belt’s functions across the St Helens plan area. Grey belt status did not itself settle the outcome, because the Framework also requires evidenced unmet need, a sustainable location and compliance with the relevant Golden Rules.
St Helens’ five-year housing supply was decisive
The council calculated 5.48 years of housing land supply. The appellant put the figure at 3.63 years. An important dispute concerned 458 additional homes delivered earlier in the plan period. The council had effectively credited that historical overdelivery across the remaining years, reducing the future annual housing requirement from 486 to 444 homes and the next five years’ requirement by 208.
The Inspector rejected that approach in the circumstances. St Helens’ adopted policy sets a minimum of 10,206 homes over the plan period and calls for an annual average of at least 486. Reducing future years below that figure by crediting earlier completions did not, in the Inspector’s judgment, accord with the wording of the adopted policy. Inspector L N Hughes wrote that “the Council should not rely on past oversupply when calculating its future housing supply” for the purposes of the five-year test. The Inspector also considered the much higher local housing need figure of 766 a year that would become relevant after the strategic housing policy passed its fifth anniversary.
The grey belt appeal raised a second supply problem at the Local Plan’s Bold Village allocation. The council expected 150 homes there within the five-year period, but the evidence did not demonstrate realistic delivery. The large allocated site still faced unresolved roof-tax negotiations, infrastructure questions and a lack of detailed timing from developers. An allocation is not the same thing as a demonstrably deliverable site.
The Inspector removed 208 dwellings from the oversupply credit and a further 150 at Bold Village from the council’s projected trajectory. The Inspector concluded that the resulting supply fell below five years, but did not adopt the appellant’s 3.63-year calculation as a new official borough-wide figure, and no exact revised total was stated in the decision.
The historic treatment of oversupply has also been considered in Tewkesbury Borough Council v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government [2021] EWHC 2782 (Admin). The High Court recognised that whether past overdelivery should count can involve planning judgment under the relevant policy. That does not make every council’s surplus either automatically usable or automatically worthless.
Affordable homes and Golden Rules
The proposal provides 100% affordable housing and includes a mix of house sizes and types, with provision for accessible and adaptable dwellings. The Inspector considered it a sustainable location, connected to shops, schools and bus services. That satisfied the sustainable location requirement of the Framework’s grey belt route under GB7(g).
As major housing in the Green Belt, it also had to address GB8 Golden Rules. The Inspector found that the affordable homes, infrastructure measures and green space secured through the section 106 agreement met the relevant requirements. Having found the GB7(g) requirements met, the Inspector concluded the scheme would not be inappropriate development in the Green Belt, without needing to establish very special circumstances.
The Inspector noted the substantial value of genuinely affordable accommodation for the community. This was not simply a case of housing numbers outweighing an identified Green Belt policy violation: the threshold national test for non-inappropriate grey belt development was found to have been met.
Biodiversity, contributions and local concerns
The land formed part of the Grassland by Parr Flat Local Wildlife Site, but the council considered that it no longer met the original designation criteria because of poor management. The scheme would restore land south of the homes with ponds, marshy grassland, woodland management, native planting and other habitat measures. The Inspector recorded projected biodiversity net gain of 57.33% in habitat units and 10.34% in watercourse units, with long-term management secured.
The section 106 agreement also provides £90,360 towards Bold Forest Park access and footpath improvements and £106,144 towards local special educational needs and disabilities provision. Affordable housing arrangements, open-space management and biodiversity safeguards were secured through the legal agreement and associated conditions.
The grey belt appeal did not dismiss residents’ concerns about drainage, construction traffic, noise or privacy. The Inspector found the scheme acceptable subject to conditions addressing sustainable drainage, ecology, contamination, landscaping, archaeology and construction management. The Inspector found that the scheme’s traffic would cause no highway capacity issues and identified no highway safety problem, with pedestrian crossing improvements at the nearby roundabout secured by condition.
A further unusual detail concerns permitted development rights for the new homes. The Inspector accepted restrictions on later extensions, roof enlargements and porches under Part 1 Classes A, B and D, but rejected a blanket restriction on Class E outbuildings. The Inspector saw no overriding harm that would justify requiring a planning application for ordinary sheds or similar incidental garden buildings.
What the decision means for grey belt sites
Our guide to grey belt and Green Belt explains the current definition and GB7 tests. The five-year housing land supply guide explains why realistic site delivery matters, and the local housing need guide distinguishes plan requirements from the standard method.
For other projects, the lesson is to test every element separately: the land’s actual contribution to Green Belt purposes, the deliverability of the housing trajectory, any claimed overdelivery credit, whether the site is sustainable and whether affordable housing and infrastructure commitments meet the applicable Golden Rules. The grey belt appeal shows how a detailed supply challenge can change the status of an otherwise contentious scheme.
The decision is appeal 6010284, issued on 9 November 2026 following a hearing on 14 October. The appeal decision is also available on AppealBase.
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