← Service Village Does Not Mean Sustainable

C · Tier cited in support, beside route or transport evidence

Land rear of 6-108 Mell Road, Tollesbury

maldon-26-00066-OUTM·Maldon·2 Sept 2026approved·26/00066/OUTM

Tier label used

larger village

The tier sentence (from the case file)

“edge of 'larger village', development on two sides, no gap”

The route sentence report ¶5.2.21

“acknowledge that there would be an element of reliance on private motor vehicle trips which cannot be fully addressed”

Summary

A Gladman outline scheme for 149 homes (40% affordable) on fields behind Mell Road, Tollesbury, a "larger village" outside the Green Belt. The Council has a supply of about 4.1 years. Officers treated it as S5(1)(j) development: evidenced unmet need, physically well related to the village, and infrastructure capacity shown. On the "substantially outweighed" balance they recommended the committee say it would have approved. The vote tied and the chair's casting vote carried approval. The decision will be the Council's position at the non-determination appeal.

The location finding

  • TR3: pass. short walk to primary school, bus stops, shop, pharmacy, pub; buses roughly every 30 min combined 07:00-19:30 weekdays, none evenings/Sundays; officers accept 'an element of reliance on private motor vehicle trips'; £440k bus contribution

Why this is cited

Larger-village edge, well related, with Connectivity Tool; approved on casting vote. In the register this counts as a case where the tier was cited in support of the scheme beside route or transport evidence.

Sources

Application on the council planning portal · full decision note · quoted from cases/maldon-26-00066-OUTM.md

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.