The section 106 stalled when the neighbouring developer refused to be bound by it. The applicant has now cut that land out. Committee decides again on Wednesday.
New Forest District Council’s planning committee resolved to approve 53 homes at Middle Burgate, on the northern edge of Fordingbridge, in May 2024. Twenty-eight months later there is still no planning permission.
The reason is a piece of grass.
The scheme goes back to committee on Wednesday 9 September, and the officer report sets out why the legal agreement behind it never got signed.
What is proposed
The site is Middle Burgate House on Salisbury Road, part of Strategic Site 18 in the council’s local plan. Application 22/11268 is a hybrid, which means part of it is detailed and part is not:
- 41 open market homes in outline, with layout and access settled now and scale, appearance and landscaping left for later
- 4 affordable shared ownership flats created by converting and extending Middle Burgate Farmhouse
- 8 more affordable flats in a new block, split between affordable rent and social rent
- demolition of the redundant farm and horticultural buildings, a drainage basin, play areas and public open space
The applicant is Mr Currie, the agent is Ken Parke Planning Consultants and the case officer is Stephen Belli. Officers recommend approval.
The greenspace that could not be shared
New homes near the New Forest have to provide Alternative Natural Recreational Greenspace, or ANRG. It exists to give residents somewhere to walk the dog that is not a protected European wildlife site. Local plan policy sets the requirement, and the May 2024 report put this site’s at 1.04 hectares.
The version councillors approved in May 2024 got there by borrowing. The applicant and the neighbouring developer, Pennyfarthing Homes, would pool land on both sides of their boundary to make a single oval greenspace roughly 120 metres by 100 metres.
That only works if the neighbour signs the section 106 agreement too, because the land has to be available before anyone moves in and maintained forever. According to the report, Pennyfarthing Homes declined to be bound by the clauses the council put forward. Two years of discussions followed. Progress, in the report’s word, stalled.
The applicant has now redrawn the red line to exclude 0.96 hectares of Pennyfarthing land. The greenspace is instead split into two areas inside the applicant’s own ownership, the larger about 120 metres by 50 metres and a second about 90 metres by 30 metres, joined by a pavement along the access road. Both could be fenced as off-lead dog areas.
Officers say removing the third party’s land has “unlocked stalled progress” and that they are confident the agreement can now be concluded.
The report shows how the deadline has moved. In May 2024 the agreement was to be completed by the end of December 2024. In September 2025 the committee reset that to 9 September 2026, which is Wednesday. The recommendation now in front of members carries no completion date at all.
Affordable housing: 12 homes against a policy of 27
Local plan policy asks for 50% affordable housing on this site. That would be 27 of the 53 homes. The scheme offers 12, just under 23%.
The original submission offered none. The applicant’s viability assessment argued the site could not carry the policy level, citing the cost of converting and extending the existing house, high development costs and a community building element with little value.
The council sent that to its own viability consultant, Dixon Searle, with a quantity surveyor reviewing the build costs. Its first report, in July 2023, found the value tied up in the large existing house significantly depressed what the site could afford once section 106 contributions and CIL were added. Officers and the applicant then redesigned the northern part of the site, dropped the community element and added the flatted block. Affordable housing went from zero to 12.
Dixon Searle reviewed the revised scheme in April 2024 and found the applicant’s case well reasoned, while noting the development account was still in deficit overall.
Officers recommend accepting the 12. Their stated reasons include the viability advice, the time an appeal would take if the application were refused, and the fact that the mix includes social rent, which the report calls the most critically required tenure. For comparison, the report says the most recent Fordingbridge strategic site approval, by CALA Homes, delivered 21%. None of the Fordingbridge strategic sites has managed a policy compliant scheme.
What the town council said
Fordingbridge Town Council recommended refusal in January 2024. It supported the affordable housing in principle but objected on five grounds:
- the access sits close to the main road, and traffic could back up onto it if the gates or a delivery vehicle caused an obstruction
- the affordable housing is gated off from the rest of the site rather than integrated, which the council called a segregated ghetto
- the new flat block does not match the rest of the site and was thought to look like an office block
- the loss of the community building
- a significant reduction in the section 106 contributions
Hampshire County Council’s highway authority does not object, subject to conditions covering the detailed access design, a construction traffic management plan and pedestrian and cycle access through Burgate Acres. No district councillor comments were received.
The smaller print
- Public open space now falls 175 square metres short of local plan policy CS7, because the main open space area has been reclassified as greenspace. Officers consider the shortfall acceptable, pointing to two equipped play areas on site and open space on the adjoining parcels that was not open when the 2024 decision was made.
- Biodiversity net gain is set at at least 1%, because the scheme is exempt from the standard requirement.
- Lighting must meet dark skies standards. The New Forest is an International Dark Sky Reserve.
- A condition has been added requiring the ecology evidence to be revalidated before development starts, given how long the application has run.
- Strategic Site 18 is controlled by four different developers, each submitting separately. The report says the collaboration the local plan hoped for “has not in practice been possible”, and that greenspace across the site has had to be provided piecemeal.
What it means for you
- If you live at Burgate or Upper Burgate, this is 53 homes plus the parcels already under construction on the same strategic site. Construction traffic currently uses a temporary haul road that partly follows the line of the permanent access.
- Wednesday is not the final word. The recommendation is delegated authority to grant, once the section 106 is signed. Permission is issued after that, not on the day.
- A vehicular link west into the rest of Site 18 is not proposed. Connections to the neighbouring parcels are for pedestrians and cyclists only.
- This is the last window under the current rules. From 31 October a scheme of this size becomes a Schedule 2 application, which reaches committee only if two nominated people agree it should. See our report on the new scheme of delegation. A parish or town council recommending refusal, as Fordingbridge did here, will no longer be enough on its own.
The papers
- Planning Committee agenda and reports pack, 9 September 2026, New Forest District Council. Middle Burgate is item 3b, at pages 37 to 134 of the pack.
The meeting starts at 9am on Wednesday 9 September in the council chamber at Appletree Court, Beaulieu Road, Lyndhurst.
More local information: New Forest planning news and New Forest house prices.
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