A Hemingbrough housing appeal has secured planning permission for 138 homes after an Inspector rejected North Yorkshire Council’s demand for a major right-turn lane at the A63 and School Road junction. Persimmon Homes (Yorkshire) won the appeal on 3 November 2026 following a public inquiry into the development of fields behind Plinthstones in the village.
The dispute centred on a proposed ghost island right-turn lane on the A63. Inspector L N Hughes concluded that the additional traffic would not cause an unacceptable road-safety effect and that a new right-turn lane was neither necessary nor reasonable. Improved road signs and markings, secured by condition, were required instead.
The Hemingbrough housing appeal has wider significance for planning applications where highway guidance points towards expensive road works but actual traffic modelling and collision evidence suggest a more proportionate response. The result also reflects North Yorkshire’s housing shortfall, the proposed affordable homes and the effect of the August 2026 National Planning Policy Framework on older development-plan restrictions.
What the Hemingbrough housing appeal proposed
The application, reference ZG2024/1089/FULM, was for 138 dwellings, access, open space, landscaping and infrastructure, together with demolition of an existing house. The proposal was reduced from 139 to 138 homes during the application process. The land is behind existing development off School Road, close to the A63 running along the northern edge of Hemingbrough.
By the opening of the inquiry, the council and Persimmon had largely agreed the planning balance. The earlier concern about insufficient open space was no longer advanced as a stand-alone reason to refuse permission, and the parties also agreed the loss of best and most versatile agricultural land should be considered in the overall assessment. Their principal disagreement was whether the new homes required a ghost island right-turn lane where School Road meets the A63.
As the Inspector recorded, the choice was not simply between approving or refusing the whole housing scheme. The dispute concerned the form of highway condition needed if permission was granted. That distinction is central to the Hemingbrough housing appeal and helps explain why technical evidence about risk, rather than broad concerns about traffic growth, was decisive.
Why the A63 right-turn lane was rejected
The council argued that more eastbound vehicles stopping to turn right into School Road would increase the risk of rear-end collisions. Technical guidance in the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges pointed towards a right-turn lane, and the highway authority relied on its own internal matrix when choosing which design standards should apply to the non-trunk A63.
Inspector Hughes considered that standards and local professional judgement remained relevant, but the design matrix had not been formally adopted or widely known. It could not replace a site-specific examination of how the existing junction actually worked. There had been no recorded personal-injury collisions at the A63 and School Road junction since 2013, and there was no evidence of a pattern of right-turn shunts needing the proposed engineering response.
In the Hemingbrough housing appeal, agreed modelling projected an increase in right-turning vehicles during peak hours, but no longer queues or average waiting times. Stopping sight distances exceeded the relevant minimum standards. An additional highway safety risk assessment produced for the inquiry found that the scheme’s traffic would not alter the assessed level of risk at the junction.
Inspector Hughes said that “even with a five-fold increase in right turning traffic” the proposal would not reach the national policy threshold of an unacceptable highway-safety impact. This is an exact extract from paragraph 42 of the Planning Inspectorate decision, reproduced under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The point is not that rising traffic never matters, but that it must be shown to create unacceptable effects in the particular circumstances.
Improved signs and markings still required
The decision did not eliminate highway obligations. The Inspector considered that better signage, road markings and potentially a traffic island could help drivers recognise the junction and respond to its 40 mph speed limit. The Inspector also noted the prospect of more pedestrians using the area when the new homes and a separate nearby development were occupied.
The agreed alternative approach allowed a condition requiring a suitable highway improvement scheme at the junction. Those measures are to be in place before the new dwellings are occupied. That distinction matters because a headline saying no highway works were required would be misleading: the Hemingbrough housing appeal removed the requirement for a major right-turn lane, not the requirement for proportionate safety works.
It also shows the limits of comparing a development site with another junction or another scheme. The Inspector gave more weight to the specific records, accident history, traffic flows, visibility and risk assessment at School Road than to generic assumptions about what an increasing number of vehicle movements might do.
Housing supply and policy supported the scheme
North Yorkshire accepted that it could demonstrate only a 2.4-year housing land supply. The scheme would deliver 28 affordable dwellings, representing 20% of the total, and the Inspector gave substantial weight to the benefits of additional market and affordable homes. Construction activity and local economic spending would provide further benefits.
The site lies beyond the settlement boundary, but directly adjoins the built-up village. Inspector Hughes applied the revised August 2026 Framework’s Policy S5 on development outside settlements and found the scheme related sufficiently to Hemingbrough and could be accommodated with necessary infrastructure. Planning Geek’s settlement boundary guidance explains why a boundary is an important planning constraint but not an absolute bar to development.
In the Hemingbrough housing appeal, the Inspector gave limited weight to conflict with restrictive older Selby development-plan provisions that were out of step with newer national policy. The Inspector also found limited harm from the shortfall in open space and very limited harm from the loss of high-quality agricultural land. The overall national policy support outweighed the identified minor development-plan conflict.
Conditions and obligations remain important
Although Persimmon obtained permission, the development remains subject to conditions and section 106 obligations. These cover access, road signage and markings, pedestrian crossing improvements, travel planning, drainage, ecology, landscaping, archaeology and contributions to services. Some improvements must be delivered before homes can be occupied, with other details reserved for later approval under the conditions.
The scheme also requires biodiversity measures to achieve the statutory 10% net gain. The Inspector referred to the purchase of biodiversity units to address a shortfall that could not be made up within the site. Planning Geek’s biodiversity net gain guidance explains the relationship between the gain plan, habitat units and legal delivery obligations.
The Hemingbrough housing appeal highlights the value of commissioning traffic work that tests whether a proposed improvement is actually necessary rather than accepting a design-standard threshold as the whole answer. It also underlines the importance of clear evidence about housing need, infrastructure and measurable residual effects. A major road design can be rejected without abandoning road-safety mitigation entirely.
Inspector L N Hughes allowed appeal 6008696 on 3 November 2026 against North Yorkshire Council’s refusal of application ZG2024/1089/FULM. The appeal decision is also available on AppealBase. The Planning Inspectorate decision is the principal source for the findings and quotation reported here.
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