Thrown out! For the fifth time since 2012 a planning scheme behind Tesco at Cambridge Road, Stansted was thrown out last Wednesday. The tally is now four refusals by Uttlesford’s planning committee and one dismissal of an appeal by a government inspector.

Surely now is the time for the landowners at the former London & Stansted Furnishing Company to come to talk to the local community about a scheme that makes sense to them and to the local community?

There were some marginal improvements over the case put forward for approval compared with October, but for the fourth time in getting on for four years planning committee members refused to accept their planning officers’ advice to approve a developer’s scheme. This time ten houses and two commercial buildings were found unacceptable.

The committee didn’t like the scale of development, insufficient on-site parking and the impact on pedestrian and traffic safety at the junction of the site with Cambridge Road, the B1383/old A11. Here is the Decision Notice.

Four district and parish councillors spoke against approval: Maureen Caton, Peter Jones, Geoffrey Sell and me. One resident supported the developers and decried the need for cars and parking. “No one wants car parks”, he said. The proposal would have been 14 parking spaces short of the standard and had no spaces for people with disabilities.

Essex Highways say visibility sight lines from the site exit by Tesco are fine when no one is parked nearby. The planning committee disagreed with their complacency.

Essex Highways said there is no highways problem on the main arterial road, the B1383, that passes the site. They claimed it was a junction that requires 70m sight lines for cars coming out of the site for it to be safe. They then said there is only a highway safety problem when vehicles are parked by the entrance; IN A LOADING BAY OUTSIDE TESCO THAT ESSEX CC PUT IN WITHOUT CONSULTING ANYONE. This comment was met with howls of derision.

One of the two committee members who voted against refusal said he would do so because the public had come up with “lots of reasons” why it should be refused. The other dissenter claimed that the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) showed the application should be approved.

That’s the first time anyone has claimed that the NPPF defines individual, local proposals. I thought the days when the NPPF overrode common sense and local reality were behind us. It seems not. Thank God we don’t rely on an NPPF Central Processor to determine planning applications and that people who live in the real world are still allowed to think for themselves!