The owners of Highclere Castle Estate have proposed to Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council that much-needed repairs to some of the historic buildings on the estate are funded through some appropriate development on estate land.
Normally such development would not be permitted but in this instance may be considered appropriate because of the benefit of repairing important historic buildings, this is called enabling development.
What is enabling development?
Enabling development is defined by English Heritage as ‘development that is contrary to established planning policy - national or local - but which is occasionally permitted because it brings public benefits that have been demonstrated to clearly outweigh the harm that would be caused.’
What’s the current situation?
Following receipt of a letter from Lord Lloyd Webber last summer, stating his interest in potentially purchasing the Highclere Castle Estate, the council asked English Heritage for a view on how this could affect a future enabling development proposal for the Highclere Estate.
Enabling development is seen as a last resort, funding essential repairs to protect national heritage sites that could not be paid for any other way. The council needed to understand whether a potential buyer declaring that they were interested in the estate would mean that it should be marketed, to see whether it could be sold, before any application for enabling development was submitted.
English Heritage has now responded - see letter below. The advice is that keeping the estate together, including the parkland, castle, follies, paintings and artefacts, is a main aim of enabling development. English Heritage believes a sale on the open market is likely to result in breaking up the estate, therefore, the marketing of the estate should not be a prerequisite of an enabling development proposal, in this instance.
However, it is acknowledged that the potential to sell the estate, and the impact that might have on the public interest, should be taken into account on consideration of any actual planning application for enabling development.
Currently there are no planning applications for enabling development on the Highclere Estate.
Planning and Infrastructure Overview Committee in July
There was a meeting of the Planning and Infrastructure Overview Committee on Thursday 8 July 2010 at the Civic Offices. The committee considered a report at the meeting and made comments on:
- the proposal that instead of the policy document drafted by the council, the owners of the estate should compile a justification and implementation framework, which should be submitted in support of any future planning application(s). This responds to advice received from English Heritage in summer 2009.
- the proposed scheme of public engagement
Councillors on the committee were supportive of setting up a community panel to give local input to the next stages in any enabling development applications and raised a number of issues to be considered in making any decision
You can read the full report to the committee.(Microsoft Word Document, 191KB)
The council had recently received a letter from Lord Lloyd Webber stating that he was potentially interested in purchasing the Highclere Castle Estate (see below). English Heritage was then asked for advice on what impact this would have on the enabling development proposal.
What was proposed before this?
The council had previously considered developing a proposal for a policy in April 2009 as appendix 1 of the committee report.(Microsoft Word Document 2.49MB)
In July 2009 the council received a formal consultation response from English Heritage to the proposed policy document. The response said that the intention of the policy and its content was sound but that for the next stage (planning application stage) a master plan (or framework) would be required to supply the full information relating to the proposals and the benefits and to provide a co-ordinating framework.
You can read the full response from English Heritage as appendix 2 of the committee report.(Microsoft Word Document 55KB)
