West Lothian's 'Garden City' is set to be engulfed by a massive new housing development after the controversial plans were backed by the Scottish Government.
Proposals by ID Stoneyburn to build 300 new homes on 44 acres of farmland and woods on the western edge of the village of Stoneyburn and its tiny neighbour Bents were rejected by West Lothian Council last April.
The plans attracted dozens of objections, including many from people who live in Garden City - a street of Edwardian cottages in Bents named for the Garden city movement, an architectural movement and urban planning ethos that celebrated the importance of sustainable living and green space.
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Garden City was built in the years before the First World War as part of a scheme which aimed to make good quality housing affordable to all classes.
The green space surrounding the area will now disappear after part of the plan was supported by a Reporter appointed by the Scottish Government’s Division of Planning and Environmental Appeals (DPEA).
Planning officer Wendy McCorriston told this week’s meeting of the Development Management Committee: “The Reporter determined the plan was appropriate in terms of character and would fit in”
The Reporter, Gordon Reid, agreed with the developers' argument that West Lothian had not set aside enough land for housing demand. He did not accept the councils argument that the introduction of the new planning guidelines NPF4, which come into force this coming Monday, would validate the council’s argument.
Council leader Lawrence Fitzpatrick told the meeting the land supply argument was “nonsensical”.
He added: “This argument about housing supply. I have always considered it nonsensical because a builder can sit with a landbank and build nothing. It is the council that’s seen to be a fault because a thousand houses haven’t been built. It is a total nonsense.”
Councillor Fitzpatrick told the meeting he had requested meetings with ministers to discuss planning matters and been denied them. He added: “I hope that NPF4 will try and bring back confidence in the overall planning system because, certainly at community level people are very angry at certain decisions.”
One objector to the original plan, Stuart Aitken, told the DMC at the April 2022 meeting which threw out the proposal that the plans were “speculative and opportunistic”.
He told the committee: “There would be a 326-degree impact north, south, east and west of Garden City for five or six years.”
He added: “I would have expected something like that to be more of a protected area because of the Garden city movement; 300 homes thrown together for pure profit.”
Another objector, Dr David Campbell, said in a written objection the plan would mean a 100% growth in population of Bents and 33% increase for the Stoneyburn population. He, and others, highlighted the poor infrastructure with few shops and no medical facilities in the village.
There are sites in Stoneyburn, at the eastern end of the village already earmarked by West Lothian Council for homes. The land surrounding Bents is designated as countryside.
Chairing this week’s meeting Councillor Stuart Borrowman pointed to the Monday introduction of the NPF4 the new regulations and asked: “After Monday would the Reporter, he or she, might come to a different conclusion because of NPF4?."
Mrs McCorriston replied: “We would like to conclude that that would be the case.”
Mr Borrowman said: “Life could be improved if decisions by the Scottish Government were more predictable. At the moment you seem to throw the ball in and it can bounce any way,” referring to wildly differing decisions taken by different reporters on developments in the countryside.
Garden City was a forerunner of council housing, built through an early form of building society funding and could have expanded but for the outbreak of the First World War.
The garden city movement is a method of urban planning in which self-contained communities are surrounded by "greenbelts," containing proportionate areas of residences, industry, and agriculture. The idea was initiated in 1898 by Ebenzer Howard and aimed to capture the primary benefits of a countryside and a city environments.
Bents’ Garden City was a small addition to an Edwardian building boom across the country which followed that ideal and included towns such as Letchworth in Hertfordshire.
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