Five homes at Ambrosden, outline allowed at appeal.

The field sat at the end of Home Farm Close, a cul-de-sac off Merton Road at the western edge of Ambrosden, a village five kilometres south west of Bicester. It had been tried before. An application for six houses was refused in 2015, a resubmission was refused in 2016, and the appeal was dismissed that July: the site was beyond the built-up limits of the village, and the scheme was piecemeal development encroaching into the open countryside.

Then the countryside around it was consented. In 2018 the council granted five houses on the land to the north east, whose approved access ran across the field. In 2019 an appeal allowed outline permission for up to 84 homes on the land to the west. The field was now between two consented schemes. We put that to the council at pre-application in January 2020 with a layout for six semi-detached homes. The advice, in March, accepted that once the land to the west was built the site would sit within the village and the scheme would be minor development, acceptable in principle. It also found six homes cramped, with a hard edge, and said the site would need fewer. So the outline went in that July for five: two pairs and one detached house turned to face the approach, at 29 homes per hectare against 32 next door, with the access applied for in detail and proven by vehicle tracking.

The decision date passed in August 2020 without a decision. In early 2021 the council said it would refuse unless the landowner either applied jointly with the owner of the undeveloped field to the north or signed a single legal agreement covering both, for affordable housing and other contributions that neither site would owe on its own. The other owner would not join in. Our planning associate lodged an appeal against non-determination for the landowner, with the pre-application advice, the planning history of the land around the site and the layout as the evidence.

The appeal was decided on written representations. The inspector allowed it on 14 April 2022: no policy required the two fields to come forward together, they were in separate ownership, the council had not used the tools national policy gives it for assembling land, and no legal agreement was needed. It granted outline permission for five homes, with the access approved from our site plan, layout, scale, appearance and landscaping reserved, and nine conditions covering drainage, the access details, archaeology and biodiversity. An application for costs against the council was refused: the inspector found its case had been argued with substance, even though he disagreed with it. The homes now standing on the site were built in 2023 and 2024 under a later full permission designed by another practice. Our part ended with the outline.