This report recommends modification of an Article 4 direction relating to various permitted development rights that would result in new residential dwellings.

Further to Minute 35 of the meeting held on 23 September 2021 and Minute 33 of the meeting held on 31 October 2022 the Committee considered a report seeking modification of the Article 4 direction to remove certain permitted development rights that would result in new residential dwellings across the town centre, district and local centres, core employment areas and a number of other commercial areas.

The report explained that the Secretary of State had powers to modify or cancel an Article 4 direction at any point before or after it comes into force. The Secretary of State had used these powers to modify the direction on 10 October 2023 and the modification was expected to come into force on 3 November 2023.  The following documents were attached to the report:

·         Appendix 1:         Equality Impact Assessment

·         Appendix 2:         Map summarising modification

·         Appendix 3:         Modification letter and notice

The report noted that the modification incorporated reductions as suggested by officers in a Supplementary Evidence document submitted to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) in August 2022.  This went into significant detail on the justification for each building or cluster of buildings being within the direction and resulted in a suggested significant reduction to the geographical coverage of the direction from 482 ha to 111 ha, a 77% reduction.  A large proportion of this reduction was achieved by excluding areas where the permitted development right would not be able to be used in any case, in particular because the areas were not in a land use to which the permitted development right applies.  However, it did also result in the removal of around 82,000 sqm of commercial floorspace from the direction that would potentially be available to convert to residential, where it was not possible to demonstrate wholly unacceptable adverse impacts to a sufficiently specific degree.

Following a request from the DLUHC, Officers had provided further Supplementary Evidence on 7 December 2022, which sought to further justify the inclusion of air quality and noise as justification for the extent of the direction. On 3 July 2023, the Minister of State for Housing and Planning, Rachel Maclean, wrote to the Chief Executive of Reading Borough Council setting out the Minister’s view on the proposed amended Article 4 direction.  The conclusion was that the Minister was minded to modify or cancel the direction unless further sites were excluded, namely where they were justified only by noise and/or air quality issues.  Removal of these areas would further reduce the Article 4 direction area by 11 ha, a 10% reduction on the already reduced proposed area of 111 ha.  In terms of total commercial floorspace to be covered, the reduction was somewhat larger, so there would be a 22% reduction on floorspace covered by the already reduced direction.  The areas that would be removed would be primarily office locations on the edge of the town centre, in particular those around the Inner Distribution Road, although there are some other smaller noise or air quality hotspots that would be affected.

On 10 October, the Chief Planner at DLUHC wrote to the Chief Executive of the Council to notify that the Secretary of State had formally modified the Article 4 direction.  This letter included the formal modification notice and accompanying maps. The letter and notice were attached to the report as Appendix 3.

The report noted that the modification was in line with the Minister’s expressed intentions and incorporated those reductions that had been suggested by officers in the Supplementary Evidence as well as further reductions to exclude areas of justified only by poor air quality and/or noise disturbance. 

Therefore, the modified direction was much reduced from the direction as originally made having reduced from 482 ha to 100 ha.  The modified direction came into effect when notifications had been made in line with regulations on 23 November 2023.

Resolved –

That the modification of the Article 4 direction relating to various permitted development rights that would result in new dwellings be noted.