The retrospective planning application for the unlawful new road to Honeypot Farm, submitted in March, has been withdrawn by Michael Hyde Planning Associates, the agents on behalf of the owner of the farm, Sam Newall.

Without a retrospective planning application, there is no longer any justification for allowing the new road to remain in place.

The Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) therefore should now take enforcement action to ensure the land is fully restored.

Michael Hyde Associates have, however, subsequently informed the LLTNPA they intend to submit a new planning application.

The LLTNPA’s handling of the unlawful development to date

Residents had tried to get the LLTNPA to stop the work to construct the new road once they realised what was going on.

However, their pleas fell on deaf ears, and the LLTNPA instead allowed the developer to complete the new road before asking them to submit a retrospective planning application.

The LLTNPA’s approach to this unlawful development served to undermine the integrity of the planning system and encourages planning lawlessness in the National Park and more widely afield, according to sources within the Park.

They told Parkswatch: “This is because if a developer knows a planning authority will approve a development retrospectively, as the LLTNPA did with a new driveway at Tarbet in 2022 (see here), it is easier just to go ahead with a development and present a fait accompli for approval.

In the case of new access off public roads, which it is claimed has significant safety implications, in 2020 the LLTNPA did take enforcement action when they issued a temporary stop notice against the creation of a new vehicular road off the A811 east of Gartocharn and highlighted their actions in a news release:

This history suggests the LLTNPA has been taking a more relaxed approach to road safety requirements since 2020.

There are additional issues in the Conachra farm case, however, because the LLTNPA had had contracts with Sam Newall’s company, Honeywagon Ltd, to provide them with mobile toilets.

They therefore had a clear conflict of interest in this case, which may help further explain why they did not issue a stop notice (this is something which their Planning Committee should investigate).

The original deadline for determining the application was Friday 22nd May.  The LLTNPA was unable to meet this deadline because of the number of issues raised by residents, which they then drew to the attention of others.

A good example was the objection from the Walk and Wheel Cycle Trust, the successor to Sustrans:

Like many of the objections, that from the Walk and Wheel Cycle Trust shows the LLTNPA should have taken enforcement action:  in this case it appears their senior management were not even prepared to protect the safety of the National Cycle Routes and one of their own core paths from an unlawful development.

However, the objection that finally put an end to the current retrospective planning application was from Stirling Roads.

After considering new documentation submitted by the developer over the summer, which attempted to justify constructing the new access onto a point in the road where there was very limited visibility, Stirling Roads finally decided they could not relax their approved design standards and submitted an objection on 22nd September:

It is one thing to override objections to a planning application by local communities and non-statutory bodies, quite another to ignore an objection from another public authority, and it appears this forced LLTNPA officers to prepare a report for their Planning Committee recommending the application be objected to and that in turn caused the applicant to withdraw the application.

From a developer perspective, it is normally far better to withdraw a planning application than to have one rejected, as this enables the Authority to play cat and mouse with the public and erase the planning history (see here). That is exactly what the developer intends to do in this case:

This history is also important in this case because, now that there is no retrospective planning application, it evidences the need for the LLTNPA to take enforcement action now. It is of concern, therefore, that the LLTNPA has removed all the documentation relating to the planning application from its planning portal.  Unfortunately, I failed to download copies of the documentation, so I have now made an FOI request.