BOROUGH chiefs believe they have more power to protect green land – despite developers gaining permission to build 170 homes.

The Supreme Court has granted Richborough Estates permission to build 170 homes in Willaston, bringing to an end a three-year court battle with Cheshire East Council.

But CEC believes a landmark ruling made by the highest court in the country gives it more power to resist speculative housing developments on greenbelt or green gap land in future.

In a ruling announced on May 10, five judges vindicated the position taken by CEC and Suffolk Coastal Council that guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was being applied incorrectly, after the Court of Appeal had treated local and neighbourhood plan policies as out of date.

The Supreme Court judgement said: “No one would naturally describe a recently approved greenbelt policy in a local plan as ‘out of date’, merely because the housing policies in another part of the plan fail to meet the NPPF objectives.”

Sean Hannaby, CEC director of planning and sustainable development at CEC, said: “This is a momentous victory for planners and planning authorities. It means that due weight must be given to an authority’s non-housingrelated policies, such as green gap protection.

“We may have lost the battle in Willaston but we have won the war in terms of resisting unsustainable, speculative development schemes that impact our countryside and our residents.”