Outline permission for up to five homes at Ugley has been allowed despite conflict with Uttlesford’s newly adopted Local Plan, because a genuine three-home fallback would cause a similar level of planning harm.
The Inspector found the countryside site unsuitable for housing under the new spatial strategy. Residents would depend heavily on cars, and the proposal did not qualify as limited infilling.
But refusing five homes would not remove the realistic prospect of three homes being built in the same location. That existing permission carried significant weight, helping tip the planning balance in favour of the larger scheme.
Five homes allowed at Snakes Lane
Inspector L Reid allowed appeal 6008264 on 4th September 2026. The site is land west of The Cottage, Snakes Lane, Ugley, Essex, in the Ugley Green area.
Dr Edward Perkins had appealed against Uttlesford District Council’s refusal of application UTT/25/3066/OP. The permission is in outline, with access determined and appearance, landscaping, layout and scale reserved for later approval.
That distinction matters. The appeal establishes permission for up to five homes, subject to conditions, but it does not approve every detail of the houses shown on the illustrative plans.
You can read the complete Ugley fallback appeal decision hosted by Planning Geek.
The new Local Plan did not support this location
Uttlesford adopted its Local Plan 2021–2041 on 25th March 2026, after the original application had been determined. The Inspector assessed the appeal against that new plan, not the superseded 2005 plan.
The land lies outside a defined settlement boundary. It did not meet the countryside exceptions in Development Policy 1, and the proposal conflicted with the settlement strategy in Core Policy 3.
The Inspector also rejected the argument that the extra homes would be limited infilling under national policy S5. The site was an open field adjoining The Cottage on one side and countryside on the others.
The three permitted houses had not been built. They could not be treated as existing houses forming a gap into which two more would be inserted.
This is an important distinction between the physical assessment of infilling and the separate fallback position. An unbuilt permission can be a material consideration without turning an open field into an existing group of houses.
Limited travel choices remained a real objection
Ugley Green has limited services and facilities. Residents would need to travel elsewhere for many everyday needs, including to larger settlements such as Elsenham and Stansted Mountfitchet.
There were some cycling and bus options, but the Inspector found important limitations. The nearest bus service operated only twice a day on term-time weekdays, while access to other services would not be attractive or practical for everyone.
For many day-to-day trips, future residents would remain reliant on cars. The proposal therefore conflicted with Core Policies 26, 27 and 28, as well as the wider spatial strategy.
The Inspector did not dismiss those policies as irrelevant. Development Policy 1 was given full weight, and the scheme was found to conflict with the development plan as a whole.
The fallback had both stages of consent
The existing three-home permission was not just an aspiration or an unfinished permission-in-principle application.
On 31st March 2025, Inspector John Felgate allowed appeal APP/C1570/W/24/3350263, granting permission in principle for up to three dwellings under application UTT/24/1003/PIP.
The council then granted technical details consent in September 2025, reference UTT/25/2125/TDC. The September 2026 appeal decision confirms that both stages had been approved, leaving an extant planning permission.
As our guide to permission in principle and technical details consent explains, the first stage addresses location, land use and the amount of development. The second stage is needed before development can proceed through that route.
The Inspector accepted a realistic prospect of the approved three-home scheme being implemented if the appeal failed. It was more than a merely theoretical alternative.
An old decision and an extant permission are not the same thing
The new Local Plan changed the policy context. That reduced the weight the Inspector gave to earlier decisions which had found similar locations acceptable under the old plan.
However, the three-home permission was still available to be implemented. A change in policy did not, by itself, remove that fallback.
Our analysis: this is the most useful part of the appeal. The persuasive value of an earlier decision and the consequences of an extant permission are different questions.
A council may reasonably say that an old decision was made under a different policy framework. It must still consider what could realistically happen under a permission that remains capable of implementation.
Why three homes and five caused similar harm
The locational shortcomings would apply to both schemes. Neither three homes nor five would bring the site closer to shops, services or useful public transport.
The fallback also comprised three substantial family homes: a five-bedroom house, a four-bedroom house and a three-bedroom house. The Inspector considered their potential occupancy when comparing the schemes, rather than assuming that three homes necessarily meant a very small population.
The sizes of the five proposed houses were not settled at this outline stage. Nevertheless, the increase would be no more than two dwellings, and it would not change the site’s accessibility.
The Inspector concluded that the appeal proposal would give rise to a similar level of harm and attached significant weight to the fallback. In the final balance, the existing permission weighed heavily in favour of allowing the appeal.
This does not mean any permission for three homes justifies five. The important finding was the comparison between the actual fallback and this particular proposal.
There is a useful contrast in the Tandridge five-home barn conversion appeal. There, the Inspector accepted a very real prospect of the five-home fallback being implemented, but gave it only limited weight because it affected much less land and would cause less harm overall.
Housing undersupply helped, but did not decide it alone
The decision records that Uttlesford could not demonstrate a five-year housing land supply. It does not give a precise current supply figure.
The relevant additional housing benefit was up to two homes beyond the fallback, not five homes compared with no development. That was a small but positive contribution, alongside construction jobs and longer-term spending by occupants.
The Inspector also found no harm to the area’s character and appearance. A small, contained group of homes could fit the dispersed pattern of development, with vegetation helping retain its separation from neighbouring groups.
Overall, the fallback and other benefits were material considerations justifying a decision contrary to the development plan. This follows the plan-led framework in section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004; it is not a finding that a housing shortfall automatically overrides a newly adopted plan.
Two condition points worth reading carefully
On electric vehicles, paragraph 46 says a separate charging condition was unnecessary because Building Regulations covered the matter. There is a qualification: condition 19 still refers to Approved Document S 2021, alongside the accessible-housing requirement M4(2).
Approved Document S concerns charging infrastructure. The reasons and schedule therefore need reading together; this is not a clean example of every EV-related planning requirement being removed.
For biodiversity net gain, the Inspector said the statutory biodiversity gain condition applied and declined suggested conditions which would duplicate matters dealt with through the biodiversity gain plan process.
That was not a BNG exemption or a blanket ban on habitat-management conditions. Separate conditions securing ecological enhancement, lighting controls and mitigation remained. The practical lesson for planning conditions is to identify what still needs securing, rather than repeating another control without considering its scope.
The Planning Geek takeaway
A newly adopted Local Plan matters, and this appeal applied it. But a genuine fallback does not disappear just because policy has changed.
The strongest fallback case explains what can lawfully happen, why there is a real prospect of it happening, and how its effects compare with the proposal under consideration. Here, those steps made the difference between policy conflict and an allowed appeal.
Sources: the locally hosted appeal decision linked above, especially paragraphs 3–5, 7–21, 35–41 and 46–47, plus condition 19; the earlier permission-in-principle appeal, found via AppealBase; the council’s adoption information; and government guidance on permission in principle.
Created: 7th September 2026
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