A back-land plot pushed to its full value: four detached family homes, won at committee with the parish council against it.
The consented four around the shared drive. Visualisation prepared from the approved drawings; the homes are consented and not yet built.
One ageing bungalow behind the Hob Lane frontage, demolished for four detached family homes, on a third of a hectare reached by a track shared with a working livery yard.
Warwick District Council ref W/24/0454, on the public register. Granted at Planning Committee, first application, no appeal. Conditions still to discharge before a start on site.
A landowner brought us a single back-land plot: the garden and grounds of an ageing bungalow, set behind the houses that front Hob Lane and reached only by a narrow shared track.
Land like this is worth what can credibly be consented on it, and very little more. So we applied for the number the plot could physically take, and let the council tell us where the ceiling actually was.
The four and a half months between the committee vote and the decision notice were the section 106 being completed, not a delay in determination.
The fifth house was the one that could lose the other four.
Seven months in, the officer came back on the number of units, separation distances and amenity. Within the week she had a sketch: the nearest plot moved off its neighbour, the garages gone, five houses down to four.
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She viewed the reduced scheme much more favourably, and asked us to push the houses further north again. Every officer assessment from that point on was made on the revised drawings.
The application went in on 2 July 2024 for five houses. That number was deliberate. A back-land plot is worth what can credibly be consented on it, so the way to find the ceiling is to design to it and let the council mark it, rather than guess low and hand back value nobody ever tested. Objection arrived quickly and it clustered: overdevelopment, the back-land character, the width of a track shared with a livery yard, parking, drainage and the loss of trees. The parish council objected, ten third parties objected, five wrote in support, and under the council's constitution that volume alone took the decision away from the case officer and put it in front of a planning committee.
The officer's own response landed at the end of January 2025, seven months in. She supported the principle of development, and then set out where the scheme failed: the number, layout and design would not reflect the character of this edge of the village; the layout did not meet the council's separation distances, between the nearest plot and the neighbour to the north and between plots; the bin store was too far to carry to. Because of the number of units, she wrote, the scheme would not give future occupiers a suitable level of amenity and would harm the neighbours' amenity. She asked how we wished to proceed, and offered to consider amendments before she finalised a recommendation.
We had a sketch back with her inside the week: the nearest plot relocated and its attached garage removed to open up the separation distance, the detached garage removed, and five houses reduced to four. She met us in February, viewed the reduced scheme much more favourably, and asked for the houses to be pushed further north still. The full amended drawings followed in March, and the council changed the application description from five dwellings to four. It cost a unit and it cost time, because the change triggered re-consultation and moved the committee from spring to autumn. It also took away the argument the objectors were strongest on.
The rest was technical. The council's energy consultant took several rounds on carbon offsetting under the Net Zero Carbon policy before the calculation and the full SAP report satisfied it in June 2025. Ecology ran from a preliminary appraisal through to bat and great crested newt work, and the mitigation it set is now carried by two conditions.
Drainage is worth being straight about, because it did not end the way these usually do. The Lead Local Flood Authority objected and never withdrew: it wanted a consent to connect to an existing watercourse, a maintenance company for the site-wide drainage, and details of the private systems inside the site. A flood risk assessment, a revised drainage strategy and a SuDS maintenance plan went in behind it, and the objection still stood in the committee report. The officer's judgement was that the outstanding items are private permissions that normally sit outside a planning application, that there was no evidence a drainage solution could not be achieved here, and that the details should be secured by condition instead. The scheme was recommended for approval with a statutory objection live on the file.
With no five-year housing land supply in the district, the tilted balance in paragraph 11(d) of the framework was engaged, and the case was put as sustainable development in a Growth Village whose benefits were not significantly and demonstrably outweighed by harm. Committee upheld the officer recommendation on 7 October 2025. The consent then waited four and a half months on the section 106, and the notice issued on 25 February 2026 with twenty-one conditions.
Twenty months from validation to decision, five consultant disciplines, one committee, and a section 106 that had to be finished before the permission existed.
Granted at the first attempt. No appeal, and no refusal to appeal against.
One objection was still live at committee. It was answered in the report, not withdrawn.
At 0.36 hectares this site would still be caught by the rules as they stand today.
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