Land at Harlestone Road/York Way, Northampton

6004385·West Northamptonshire·7 Sept 2026allowed·2025/0057/MAO

Tier label used

rural settlement hierarchy (Policy R1)

The tier sentence ¶28

“within rural areas, development will be guided by a rural settlement hierarchy”

The route sentence ¶39

“there is a genuine choice of travel modes to access services within the locality”

Summary

Outline scheme for up to 100 homes (40% affordable) on a greenfield Green Wedge site north of York Way, opposite two urban extensions on the edge of Northampton. The council refused it on Green Wedge grounds. The appeal was allowed after a hearing. The Green Wedge policy was not breached because Harlestone Firs woodland separates the site from the fringe villages. Countryside and spatial-strategy conflicts were agreed but given limited weight. The site passed S5(1)(j) because there is no five-year supply and it is physically well related to Northampton's urban edge.

The location finding

TR3: pass. hourly bus to Northampton/Rugby, facilities 0.8-2 km, A428 footways adequate, new York Way crossing; "genuine choice of travel modes" (DL 32-41)

Why this is cited

Site beyond any village confines = conflict with Policy R1; location found accessible on the route (hourly bus, footways, facilities 0.8 to 2 km away); allowed. In the register this counts as a case where the tier counted against the site.

Sources

Decision on the Planning Inspectorate appeals service · full decision note · letter pins-corpus/6004385.txt

One entry in a register of 203 decisions that matched the search for a settlement-tier label, each read at every matching passage and classified by how the label influenced the decision. The quotation was checked against the source named above. Not legal advice. © Planning Distilled. Text, data and images on this page are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: share and adapt them freely, with credit to Planning Distilled. Quotations from decision letters, plans and the Framework remain the copyright of their publishers. Source and data: github.com/planningdistilled/research.