Princess mary hospital, raf halton, wendover (410 Homes)

It all started well: a lovely site, owned by Barratt and Bellway, an ex-barracks in a beautiful landscape setting, an extension to a pretty Chilterns village, with Outline Consent for 400 homes but with a rather clunky1:2500 concept masterplan. But the sting in the tail - Siting was approved!! The blocky, marker pen, hand drawn 1:2500 concept masterplan was approved!! Apparently, Members had wanted more certainty of the layout - and somewhere between the Planning Officer, the Vendor and the Members, it had been decided that it would be a good idea to approve ‘siting’ based on the afore-mentioned 1:2500 scale concept masterplan.

It got worse. Our team met the Members to discuss the scheme moving forward, and the first thing they told us was: “Our vision for this site is - well - do you know the opening credits to The Vicar of Dibley? We want that, thank you.” Another Chilterns village, I grant you, but nothing like our rather different site of 400 medium to high density homes.

So, once we’d halted our despair, we pulled together our best negotiating powers and got to work. Officers’ first view on the siting was that they would allow a limited amount of change to the layout - “about 5%” (although 5% of what, wasn’t exactly clear). Blown up to 1:500, the concept masterplan was obviously completely unworkable - parking, relationships, gardens, road geometry, unit sizes, everything - but it took a dozen A0 sized drawings, critiquing the concept masterplan in finite detail to convince Officers that it might be better to accept that we would replan the development in accordance with the concept, with the detail and siting redesigned to…. well…… work.

That hurdle over... The elevational designs were sourced from the historic village, and are very traditional in style, in form, in detailing and in materials; good, strong urban design principles in respect of townscape, composition and legibility. It’s a lovely scheme actually, very fitting of its setting - oh, it’s not Dibley in any way, but it’s right for the village and was our faith in Planning restored……. No,no,no,no,no…yes (only Dibley fans will appreciate that line)