It is not ordinarily the role of Members of Parliament to intervene in planning matters, but there are some planning applications which, in scale or significance, merit a different approach. The application to build 55 houses on the site of the Woodside Conference Centre on Glasshouse Lane in Kenilworth should not be granted in my view and I have written to Warwick District Council as the Planning Authority to register my objection. I regret that an application to demolish the Conference Centre has already been granted.
I am familiar with the facilities the Woodside Conference Centre offers and have used them myself several times. It is disappointing that the current operators did not believe they could maintain a successful business on the site, but such a conclusion does not establish that no business on the site could be viable in the future. The reference that has been made to the impact of the pandemic in limiting custom reinforces this point – the pandemic’s effects are no longer felt in the same way and are likely to diminish further over time. In any event, it is not clear to me how any conclusion, sufficient to change the planning status of the site, that the Woodside will never be viable again could have been reached, or on what evidence it has been based.
It is true that the surrounding land was allocated for housing in the Warwick District Local Plan, submitted for examination on 28th January 2015 (and still the extant Local Plan for planning purposes), but it was also the clear expectation in the development of that Plan that, to quote from the Land East of Kenilworth Development Brief from March 2019, ‘the hotel and conference centre will be retained, albeit with a smaller curtilage’ (p16). This was also the impression given to the Planning Inspector who was appointed by the Secretary of State to examine and report on the Local Plan, who said in his report dated 28th July 2017 that ‘it is intended that the buildings at Woodside Training Centre will be retained’ (p39). It is clear therefore that when the Local Plan was prepared and confirmed, it was not considered necessary to demolish the Woodside and build 55 houses there. It is worth recalling that a central purpose of the Local Plan is to provide for land to be developed for new housing in a considered way, to meet expected demand and to provide a basis for resisting speculative applications beyond the sites identified in the Plan. What then has changed?
Although developers would always like permission to build on more sites, I do not see the justification for more housing land being required in and around Kenilworth, in addition to the very substantial development underway or in prospect under the Local Plan’s provisions. If anything, what has transpired since the Local Plan was written has been significant challenge to the accuracy of the numbers of houses said to be needed in this part of Warwick District to accommodate the needs of Coventry which cannot be met within the city itself. If justified, such challenge means the Local Plan provides for too many houses, not too few. The case for additional housing land being needed or justified in the Kenilworth area has not, in my view, been convincingly made and, again, surely the point of the Local Plan process is to define that need and limit other development outside the sites incorporated in the Plan?
On this basis, I do not believe the replacement of a local heritage asset in the Woodside Conference Centre with the development of more housing on the site would be appropriate and I hope the application to do so will be refused by Warwick District Council.
