Hatton Station, Warwick
A field beside Hatton Station, 350 metres from the platform, in the same county and decided two days after the Claverdon footway was surveyed. Proximity to a railway station did not make the location sustainable, because the route to it was not one people could safely walk.
- Appeal reference
- APP/T3725/W/26/6006637
- Decided
- 23 September 2026, after a hearing
- Authority
- Warwick District Council
- Proposal
- 28 dwellings, 100% affordable, 75% social rent
- Housing land supply
- 1.96 years
- Framework
- August 2026, published three days before the hearing
What the inspector found on foot
Reaching the shops and the school
The inspector took the distances first, then the quality of the route, and the second answered the first.
owing to the distances involved and the constraints affecting route quality and useability, these destinations are unlikely to be accessed on foot or by cycleDecision letter ¶17
The approach to the station
350 metres, along a road with nothing provided for anyone on foot, to platforms that are not all step-free.
users must travel along Station Road, including the bridge crossing the railway line, where there are no meaningful dedicated facilities for either pedestrians or cyclists. Furthermore, two of the station's three platforms do not benefit from step-free accessDecision letter ¶19
The character of the road
The appellant argued it was a quiet shared rural carriageway. The inspector accepted the traffic figures and rejected the conclusion.
Station Road is principally designed to accommodate vehicular movement. The route is narrow and there are a range of physical constraints affecting useability, particularly for pedestrians … Slimline grassed verges, frequently bounded by hedgerows and other vegetation, provide limited opportunities to step clear of the carriageway. Further, forward visibility is restricted in places by the road's curved alignment and undulating topography, and the route is also unlitDecision letter ¶21
Where the constraints apply
Not at one pinch point, but along the whole way.
the potential for direct conflict between vehicles and pedestrians is readily apparent … useability constraints apply along almost the entirety of the route from Oakdene Crescent to the railway stationDecision letter ¶22
The test applied
A missing footway was not treated as automatically fatal. The question was whether the route works for everyone.
I also accept that the absence of continuous footways does not automatically render Station Road unsuitable for pedestrian use. Nonetheless … Station Road cannot reasonably be regarded as providing a safe route for all users, particularly pedestriansDecision letter ¶24
The route to the bus stops
The same reasoning applied to the twice-weekly bus.
The route to them is in-part a high-speed vehicular corridor that is unlit and lacks footways or dedicated cycling infrastructureDecision letter ¶15
The clean collision record
There had been no injury collisions since 2014. The inspector gave that little weight.
[the absence of recorded collisions] must be treated with caution in light of the clear physical constraints evident on the groundDecision letter ¶23
People already walking it
CCTV recorded 70 pedestrians and 13 cyclists over twelve hours. That did not show the route was acceptable.
[observed use does] not demonstrate that the route is universally perceived as safe … some journeys arise out of necessity rather than choiceDecision letter ¶26
What else was weighed
The station itself. 350 metres away, but it failed the Annex B definition: “the station does not meet the Framework's definition of a 'well-connected station' because fewer than four trains per hour serve it throughout the daytime on a typical weekday and fewer than two trains per hour operate in any one direction” (¶18). The station route under GB7(1)(h) was therefore unavailable.
Distances to services. Shop and pub at Shrewley 1.7 to 1.8 km; school 2.3 km, served by a minibus. The canal towpath is unlit and unsurfaced.
Traffic. 653 vehicles a day, 64 two-way in the peaks, mean speeds 23 to 26 mph, 85th percentile about 30 mph. Low speeds and volumes did not rescue the route.
Scale. 28 homes “could reasonably be expected to generate a significant amount of movement when assessed in the context of the host area” (¶29), on only about 112 vehicle movements a day.
Mitigation offered. Signage, coloured surfacing and a road-safety contribution were “relatively minor”, and a 20 mph traffic order had “no legally binding mechanism” (¶34 to 35).
Knock-on effect. The same failure defeated the Golden Rules: “necessary local highway infrastructure improvements have not been suitably identified, substantiated, or secured” (¶44).
Benefits. Very significant weight to 28 affordable homes against a 1.96-year supply, considerable weight to economic benefits. “Such benefits would not clearly outweigh[] the substantial harm identified to the Green Belt” (¶60).
The point the case turned on
The walking route, and nothing else. The site was closer to a railway station than almost any comparable case, in a district with a severe shortfall, offering 28 affordable homes. It still failed, because 350 metres of unlit, narrow, footway-less road stood between the houses and the platform. The appellant would have needed a deliverable, secured footway to the station.
Read the inspector's full decision: appeal 6006637 (PDF). Official record on the Planning Inspectorate service: appeal-planning-decision.service.gov.uk. Paragraph numbers above are those of the decision letter.
Summarised for application 26/01470/FUL, Land North of Station Road, Claverdon. Quotations are verbatim from the decision letter; the surrounding description is a summary. Back to the route survey.
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