A new planning requirement “plonked on” developers was seriously delaying the building of new homes in the Lake District, a meeting of Keswick Town Council was told.
In a report, Geoff Davies, the chairman of the Lake District National Park Authority’s development control committee, said that a significant extra challenge to the development management service had been nutrient neutrality.
“Following advice issued by Natural England in March, new developments in four catchments in the National Park must avoid adding further nutrient loading, in particular phosphates,” said the report from Mr Davies.
“If a development would add further nutrients, then it must have a way of removing the same amount of nutrients from elsewhere in the catchment. This is what is meant by nutrient neutrality.”
Mr Davies pointed out that two “nutrient neutrality” cases had already been dealt with by the development control committee.
The first was an outline application for five local need and seven local affordable need dwellings in Braithwaite, in the catchment of the river Derwent and Bassenthwaite Lake Special Area of Conservation (SAC).
The applicant carried out an assessment which showed that the development would add nutrients to the SAC and submitted a proposal to mitigate this by providing offsetting on a parcel of land within the same catchment.
This would involve changing the use of the land from its current lowland pasture to woodland which would provide sufficient mitigation to ensure nutrient neutrality.
In response, Cllr Paul Titley said: “This is one of those occasions when newts and bats are going to have to suck it up because this is halting housing development in the national park.
“It’s been plonked on with no consultation and is completely crazy and does not help the case for Mother Nature.
“It does seem crackers that you have to go invent a wood if you want to build a house in this area considering the housing shortage we have. Not enough fuss has been made about the importance of house building in places like Keswick.”
Cllr Alan Dunn said that he had attended a consultation in Keswick about a plan by Atkinson’s to extend Calvert Way by building 146 extra houses. He said that he had spoken to the developer who had complained that nutrient neutrality would add £8,000 to the cost of each plot, and since then nothing had been heard about the plans.
Cllr Duncan Miller, who is chairman of the town council’s planning committee, said: “I agree with Paul. It’s not stopping development but it (nutrient neutrality) is seriously delaying it.”
