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Prince Charles contests ban on Duchy housing

Thursday, 20 January 2011 12:32 PM

An application to transform Prince Charles's Duchy farmland into a 2,000-home property development has been denied by Bath Council - but the Prince is challenging the decision.

The plans were originally submitted after the former Labour government had issued Bath Council with the target of constructing 15,500 new homes within 15 years.

Locals from the village of Newton St Loe had hoped the future king would drop the idea after a new target of just 11,000 homes was announced in November, but they have been sorely disappointed. A letter from the Duchy said, "If Bath has to grow, the Duchy's site is the obvious choice."

Manon Williams, Prince Charles's private secretary, added: "If development is to happen anyway, it should be done in as sympathetic a way as possible, working to high standards of sustainable urbanism."

The Prince is known for his passion for both environmental issues and architecture. If the greenbelt land, which lies between Twerton Fork and the Globe roundabout, were to be developed, it would prove highly profitable to Prince Charles (who already makes £17m a year from the Duchy).

However, Bath Council rejected his application on environmental grounds: the farmland currently provides food for local schools and villages. Some have argued that there are plenty of available brown-field sites closer to the city that wouldn’t have the same impact upon the environment if they were developed.

Villagers have reportedly written to the Prince saying that they had been "fobbed off", "patronised", "misled" and "dealt with in an overly aggressive manner" by those that had handled their complaints.

The parish council, meanwhile, has told Prince Charles that many of the villagers were "incredulous" that the Duchy had even put itself forward as a development possibility, but that they were reluctant to say so because of being the Prince's tenants.

A statement from Newton St Loe Parish Council said: "Prince Charles so often describes himself as a defender of nature and the countryside. We cannot understand why the profit from the Duchy development, large as it will doubtless be, should have convinced him that our nature and our countryside do not matter."

The Duchy said that its plans constituted "the most sensible and sensitive way forward to address the housing issues in B&NES without desecrating our beautiful city and countryside".

The parish council, meanwhile, said: "It is particularly galling, at a time when the Government is developing proposals to encourage localism, that a Crown body should be attempting to find a legal loophole to change the plan developed locally after in-depth and extensive consultation."

A public inquiry has been scheduled for September 2011.

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