Bartin & Greave planning applications. It’s a no!

Turned out to be a Friday 13th horror show for the developers as both applications to reinstate the ruins of Bartin and Greaves farm houses were turned down at the Peak District National Park planning committee last Friday. This was a good decision made for the right reasons.

Path Watch has followed the  Applications from the beginning and submitted detailed comments on the plans and encouraged others who use Holmfirth Bridleways 168 and 89 to comment too. In all there were some 31 public objections to the plans.

I attended the meeting on Friday 13th at the national parks Bakewell office and spoke for my allotted 3 minutes highlighting my concerns for the future of the bridleways and the wider effects on the landscape should these plans  be approved. The national park planning officers had put a good case together for refusal which in a nutshell said that the benefits of saving these two listed buildings through the proposed plans would harm the nature of the buildings themselves and the wider landscape in which they sit.

There followed a long and, I felt intelligent and considered debate amongst the 12 members and I did feel the decision could go either way. There was a vote to defer the decision which was lost and finally the proposals were voted out with 6 members voting for refusal, 3 supporting the proposals and 3 abstentions.

I imagine an appeal will be likely but there is  a consistent history over 20 years at these sites of planning applications of this nature being turned down because of the negative effects on the wider landscape, the poor access, negative effects on recreation, the bridleways and unsympathetic treatment of the buildings themselves in the scale of works proposed.  Wouldn’t it be great if Kelder Group accepted this and spent some money repairing both buildings to a basic standard and allowing continued low level agricultural use?