Council heads to court after error in granting permission for homes in Green Belt

A district council has been forced to apply to the High Court after an administrative error meant planning permission was incorrectly granted for seven homes in the Green Belt.

South Cambridgeshire District Council said it had spoken to the applicant for the site in Haslingfield as soon as the error was spotted.

The application to the High Court has been made by Cllr Nick Wright, the council’s deputy leader.

South Cambridgeshire said it expected the planning approval to be rescinded within six to eight weeks.

The local authority explained that the error took place after the decision to refuse the application was incorrectly entered as an approval in to a computer system which generates a letter for the applicant.

This process had already been changed and additional checks put in place to try and make sure the problem did not happen again, the council said.

Cllr Robert Turner, South Cambridgeshire’s cabinet member for planning, said: “We completely hold our hands up – we have made a human error in this case. We process around 2,500 planning applications a year and we make every effort to avoid errors of this sort. We got it wrong in this case and reviewed what happened. We have apologised to the applicant and are making changes to our processes to try and make sure it does not happen again.”

South Cambridgeshire said it was “very confident” the legal process to remove the planning permission would be quickly resolved “especially as the homes are in the Green Belt”.

Any permission for development in the Green Belt must also be reviewed by the Secretary of State which in this case had not been completed, it added.

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