Plans for 420 homes given green light after appeal

Hundreds of houses can now be built next to a rail yard in Toton after a government planning inspector pushed through plans following an appeal.

The 420 homes will be built in fields next to the Toton Sidings rail yard, known as the Toton West site, off Stapleford Lane in Broxtowe.

They will form part of a larger plan for Toton, Chilwell, and Chetwynd, where up to 4,500 homes are expected to be built by 2040.

Developer Bloor Homes appealed to the Planning Inspectorate after Broxtowe Borough Council failed to determine the application within the required timeframe, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

The site was previously known as "land in the vicinity of the HS2 station at Toton (Strategic Location for Growth)", before Boris Johnson's Conservative government scrapped the high-speed rail plans in favour of a station at East Midlands Parkway.

The East Midlands leg of the line was later scrapped under Rishi Sunak's government.

In July, the borough council recommended approving the development, but residents raised concerns over "gridlock" and that three developments were being considered separately despite their cumulative impact on local roads.

Other sites include Toton East, where Bloor Homes and Peveril Homes are preparing a full planning application for 260 houses, and Toton North, where Bloor Homes hope to build a 880 homes.

Stephen Jeremiah, the borough's planning committee chairman, said: "We will continue to hold further public meetings, as we have done, and work alongside the Toton and Chilwell Neighbourhood Forum to ensure that concerns of local residents are captured and addressed in the best way possible for the area."

A significant number of planning obligations, known as Section 106 contributions, must be met by the developer.

These include £442,613 towards open space improvements and maintenance, £4,179 per house towards the building of a new primary school or the expansion of an existing school, £4,829 per house for secondary education expansion, and other contributions to library services, bus stops and community transport schemes.

Planning inspector Joanna Gilbert said in a report she visited the site twice in August, and found there was "appropriate provision for infrastructure" in the plans.

"Any harms resulting from the proposal would be very limited and would be in respect of the loss of a small amount of best and most versatile agricultural land and the change of an agricultural landscape to a housing development," she said.

"Given the main parties' agreed approach to addressing cumulative impacts on the safe operation of the highway network, the proposal would not fail to comply with one of the national decision-making policies which state that development proposals should be refused in specific circumstances."

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