A five-year battle against controversial plans to build 1,100 homes in a rural part of Lancashire looks to be over after it emerged that the legal process to challenge it has been exhausted.

The proposed development of the Pickering’s Farm site in Penwortham sparked a strident campaign by local residents, desperate to block a scheme that would make their bucolic backyard unrecognisable

South Ribble Borough Council twice refused permission for the development – on land between Penwortham Way and Leyland Road  – in 2020 and 2021. 

Members of the authority’s planning committee expressed a raft of concerns, primarily about the impact of the plans on the already congested local road network.

However, developer Taylor Wimpey and the government’s housing agency Homes England – the applicants behind the proposal – appealed to a planning inspector against the rejection of their blueprint for the site.  

In a rare move, the government stepped in and said that it would make the final decision after a nine-day public inquiry into the plans, having first taken into account the conclusions of the planning inspector who heard the evidence for and against the development.

In November last year, more than 12 months after the inquiry had sat, the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities [DLUHC] revealed that the inspector had found permission should be granted for the sprawling estate – and ministers agreed.

Ordinarily, the decision of a planning inspector can be challenged in the High Court – a process which South Ribble Borough Council leader Paul Foster, a longstanding opponent of the plans, pledged to set in motion.

However, he has now told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that the council has been given legal advice stating that there is “no legal recourse” open to the authority – because the government took the final decision, rather than the planning inspector.

“Basically, we’ve been royally stitched up,” Cllr Foster said. “The only way we can appeal is…if we can find that [the] legal process hasn’t been followed.

“I’m devastated for the local community because the reason we championed the cause of fighting [against the development] is because it was the right thing to do.

“Basically the inspector is saying, yes, we know that the roads are already log-jammed and congested beyond anything that’s deemed reasonable, but adding another 1,100 properties…won’t make it any more severe, [because] it already is severe.

“That, to me, is nonsensical – it’s like saying we know that a river is flooding, so if we add a little more water, it’s just going to flood a bit worse.”

The public inquiry had been dominated by debate over whether the Pickering’s Farm housing could be accommodated before long-unfulfilled plans to turn the A582 into a dual carriageway between Lostock Hall and Penwortham had been realised.

Cllr Foster said that the council had wanted to challenge planning inspector Patrick Hanna’s conclusions, with which the authority “fundamentally disagreed”.

“It being a Secretary of State [decision was] purely done to prevent us having any further recourse in the courts about it. It’s democracy at its worst – you can’t even say it’s democracy, it’s undemocratic what they have done,” the Labour leader said.

When approached for comment by the LDRS, the DLUHC pointed towards a footnote included within the Pickering’s Farm decision notice regarding the circumstances in which the outcome could still be challenged.

The document states: “Any person aggrieved by the decision may question the validity of the decision on the grounds that it is not within the powers of the [Town and Country Planning] Act or that any of the relevant requirements have not been complied with in relation to the decision. An application for leave under this section must be made within six weeks from the day after the date of the decision.”

Mr. Hanna rubbished much of the basis for a roads-based objection lodged by highways authority Lancashire County Council – declaring that it was “impossible” to take one of County Hall’s claims seriously and questioning its methodology for concluding that the effect of the Pickering’s Farm plans on the road network would be severe.

“The provision of 1,100 new homes, of which 330 would be affordable homes, for which there is an acute and pressing need, is a hugely worthwhile public benefit in its own right,” the inspector wrote in his report.

South Ribble’s Conservative MP Katherine Fletcher said of the apparent end of the road for challenging the Pickering’s Farm development: “I feel for the locals here, who have been so clear and strong in their opposition to this development.

“But unfortunately, there’s a large dollop of politics in what the council is peddling. This development was in its out-of-date local plan and so has been slated for development for many years by the council’s own hand.

“Government officials and the planning inspector have implemented the rules.  And the rules in this case say the local council needs an important document called a local plan to stop development like this. The council needs to get on with getting a local plan together, to prevent speculative housing development,” Ms. Fletcher said.

South Ribble, Preston and Chorley councils have been developing the first joint local plan for Central Lancashire for the past five years – and it is due to be adopted in summer 2025.