Infrastructure Planning Blog

This week’s entry has a wild west theme, featuring a film studio, horses and standoffs. It would also be remiss of me not to mention this week’s Spending Review. I should make clear that I offer no view about what (if anything) is good, bad or ugly in anything which follows.

And … cut!

The first item this week concerns a section 78 appeal against the refusal of outline planning permission for the creation of a state-of-the-art Film and TV studio at Holyport in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

The appeal has been dismissed by the Secretary of State. A copy of the decision letter can be found here.

The key findings were as follows:

• Landscape effects: the Secretary of State found that the studio buildings would be 1.5 times higher than the context height of mainly agricultural buildings in the local area and would therefore appear “dominant and incongruous in the landscape”, contrary to relevant policies in the Local Plan. The Secretary of State concluded that there “would be very substantial harm to landscape character and this carries substantial weight”.

• Need (or lack of): the Secretary of State accepted the Inspector’s finding that a clear and convincing case as to the need for the studio had not been established. Of particular importance and relevance generally is the Secretary of State’s conclusion that the Alternative Site Assessment (ASA) undertaken by the Applicant covered an area that was “far too narrow for a robust search of reasonably alternative sites”. The Secretary of State therefore concluded that it could not be certain that, had an assessment of alternative sites been applied to the area to which the Applicant’s expert witness on need stated is where the film industry wants to be, it would not have come up with viable alternative sites.

• Sustainability: the decision letter was quite scathing about the state of progress in the development of transport solutions to / from the site. The Secretary of State found that “a number of the transport solutions to make the site sustainable appear to be vaguer than expected at this stage, particularly since paragraph 109 of the [NPPF] seeks early consideration of transport issues in working up development proposals”. Whilst the Applicant proposed a number of sustainable transport solutions, including shuttle buses and car sharing, this was somewhat undermined by the proposed 1,000 parking spaces, which indicated that a high level of transport by car would be expected.

• Green belt: this was a bit of a slam dunk. Para 153 of the NPPF provides that inappropriate development in the green belt should not be approved except in very special circumstances. First, the proposed development was inappropriate development because it would undermine one of the five purposes of the green belt to safeguard the countryside from encroachment (see para 143 of the NPPF). Clearly, no very special circumstances existed because of the Secretary of State’s findings in relation to need and sustainability (see above).

So, in a nutshell, a decent proposal that would contribute to the growth of the creative industries in the UK, but in the wrong place.

Not an unbridled success

The next item looks at the Secretary of State’s minded to refuse letter in respect of a Transport and Works Act application by Network Rail for the closure of Tackley Level Crossing in Oxfordshire. The decision letter can be found here.

This is a dangerous level crossing, with a history of misuse and near-miss incidents. It falls within the top 10% of the 545 crossings between London and Penzance in terms of risk. For these reasons, a temporary closure of the crossing has been in place since 2020.

The scheme seeks to extinguish the existing section of bridleway over Tackley Level Crossing. Under section 5(6) of the Transport and Works Act 1992, an order shall not extinguish any public right of way over land unless the Secretary of State is satisfied (a) that an alternative right of way has been or will be provided; or (b) that an alternative right of way is not required. The DfT Guide to TWA Procedures also sets out that the Secretary of State would wish to be satisfied that any alternative provided ‘will be a convenient and suitable replacement for existing users’.

There was a lengthy process by which an alternative bridleway route had been identified. The scheme proposal was for a bridleway which would, for 860m of its length, run adjacent to the railway line before connecting to the existing network.

The suitability of this route was hotly contested. Ultimately, the Secretary of State found the route to be unsuitable due to safety concerns for horse riders and horses. In summary, the new bridleway would only be suitable provided the horse rider was experienced and riding a horse suitably familiarised with trains. On that basis, the Secretary of State concluded that “such limitations would constitute an alternative that is convenient and suitable only for some and not all existing users”.

John Wayne said that ‘courage is being scared to death … and saddling up anyway’. The approach was rather more circumspect in this case.

The Secretary of State was therefore minded to refuse the application in its current form, has suggested a different route (reflecting the inspector’s recommendation) and asked NR to respond within 3 months. Meanwhile, the temporary closure of the crossing expires this month. Presumably, NR will therefore need to secure a new temporary traffic regulation order under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 to prevent access over the crossing for a further temporary period.

Try this one for Size(well)

A couple of challenges have come across our radar this week.

The first one relates to Sizewell C, which has already fought off a legal challenge by Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) in the High Court (a decision which was upheld in the Court of Appeal).

TASC are at it again. The BBC article can be found here. TASC apparently wrote to Ed Miliband to ask him to consider revoking or changing the DCO, which was approved in 2022, but the request was not accepted. A JR has been launched in relation to that decision. There is also a mention of concerns regarding flood defence proposals at the site, but it’s not clear how that feeds into TASC’s contention that the DCO should be revoked or changed.

Despite this, it hasn’t been a bad week all told for Sizewell (see further below).

On a similar theme, a local campaign group known as Walshaw Turbines Research Group (WTRG) is seeking to challenge a consultation by Calderdale Wind Farm Limited into the Calderdale Energy Park, a new wind farm housing 41 turbines on Walshaw Moor, above Hebden Bridge.

The challenge alleges that there were fundamental procedural flaws in the non-statutory consultation undertaken by Calderdale, including errors in documents and lack of clarity in materials and public events. The challenge seems to be saying that Calderdale should delay / pause the consultation, so it’s not clear that it amounts to a formal JR.

Incidentally, a section 35 direction was issued for this project on 23 April 2025. A copy of that direction can be found here. This means that it is development for which a DCO is required. Quite a few section 35 directions for wind farms have been filtering through the system.

A Fistful of Dollars

This week’s Spending Review (SR) (see here) included some major announcements for infrastructure. Here are the headline figures:

• £14bn for Sizewell C plus a further £5bn to support the UK’s small modular reactor programme and for R&D into fusion energy
• £15.6bn to support transport investment in UK cities and region
• £24bn for road improvements and maintenance works
• £9.4bn to support the development of carbon capture use and storage facilities
• £6bn to support the delivery of the TransPennine rail route upgrade and the East West Rail link between Oxford and Cambridge
• £1.9bn for digital infrastructure improvements

The SR also confirms that “the government will publish its 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy later in June. This will set out a long-term plan for how infrastructure projects are planned and delivered”. We will dissect that when its published.

Finally, on the subject of money, Transport Action Network have this week won their case in the Court of Appeal that a reduction in funding of £200m from the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy was unlawful, overturning the decision of the High Court. The judgement can be found here. In a nutshell, reducing the funding entailed a formal variation to the Investment Strategy under section 21 of the Infrastructure Act 2015, which meant the Secretary of State, before doing so, had “… to pause, to consider the matters in section 21(6) and to consult”, which it had failed to do.

Mustafa will be back with more planning news next week. This blog is big enough for the both of us.

I’ll get my coat.

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