Late last week it was revealed that the Vastern Court scheme has been accepted by the government – specifically by Lee Rowley the Minister of State for housing, planning and building safety, on behalf of Michael Gove. The scheme will consist of 600 to 1000 homes, with the uncertainty due to the flexibility for the tallest building to be allocated for either flats or offices. Let’s try to unpack what’s been going on…

There are many talking points in this story. The most astounding is the four year timespan it’s taken to determine a planning application. It’s truly absurd, but we’ll return to that. First and foremost, is it a good outcome? It’s not ideal that the locally elected decision is overruled. There’s all sorts of opinions shared on social media, in feedback to consultations, rambling blogs like my own. But ultimately, you vote for councillors to hear the opinions, take expert guidance, and make decisions. From what I pick up, and contrary to my own view, the prevailing public opinion is that this development isn’t wanted on the basis that we quite like Aldi and The Range, and there’s too many <expletive> flats everywhere.

But to quote a local councillor commenting on another project last week, “The Planning Committee has to decide solely on the basis of the planning information presented to them. They cannot just vote… on the basis of… a political promise or some non-planning reason. The trick is to come up with sufficiently strong planning reasons that won’t be over-turned by a government inspector.” In rare honesty, there you have confirmation that there’s a bit of a game going on.

The government wants to build thousands of homes on brownfield sites, and there’s no state directive on the minimum number of TGI Friday outlets per city centre, so any attempt to uphold local public opinion depended on constructing other arguments against. Those reasons were put forward – the extent to which they constitute genuinely held local belief is questionable. The planning inspector overseeing the appeal accepted those as valid reasons and refused the application (April 2023 but newly made public). That decision was referred to the government, where the original appeal inspector’s 153-page report was overturned in a new 10-page letter, the conclusion of which I’ve quoted below.

Concluding paragraph from the secretary of state letter, minus a few specific references to technical documents:

• For the reasons given above, the Secretary of State considers that the appeal scheme is in accordance with Policies [list…] of the development plan, and that although the development does not comply with every policy it is compliant with the development plan as a whole. He has gone on to consider whether there are material considerations which indicate that the proposal should be determined other than in line with the development plan.
• Weighing in favour of the proposal is the benefit of reusing brownfield land which carries substantial weight; the provision of housing, the economic benefits and the provision of the north/south link which each attract significant weight; the removal of the car dominated existing development which carries moderate weight; and the lease break clauses, CIL, New Homes Bonus each carry minimal weight.
• Weighing against the proposal is the impact of the new development on daylight/sunlight for current and future residents, which carries moderate weight, landscaping and sustainability/climate change issues which each carry moderate weight, and ‘less than substantial’ harm to designated heritage assets which carries great weight.
• In line with the heritage balance…, the Secretary of State has considered whether the identified ‘less than substantial’ harm to the significance of the designated heritage assets is outweighed by the public benefits of the proposal. …Overall, the Secretary of State disagrees with the Inspector… that the benefits of the appeal scheme are not collectively sufficient to outbalance the identified ‘less than substantial’ harm to the significance of the Grade II Listed Station Building, the Grade II* Town Council Chamber, and the Market Place and London Street Conservation Area. He considers that the balancing exercise… is therefore favourable to the proposal.
• The Secretary of State therefore concludes that planning permission should be granted.

After somehow swatting away arguments on sustainability and residents’ daylight, the decision appears to boil down to the potential impact, or ‘harm’ to the view of the clock above The Three Guineas – the original station building. In fairness, the council only listed this as number three in their list of refusal reasons (and also number five – they had a couple of goes of wording essentially the same point). As an aside, do we really need that many bollards to ensure public safely? I’d have thought more people would pose that question, or maybe who allowed that whopping great video screen, rather than asking how did the less-than-substantial heritage harm of that office block not outweigh its economic contribution to Reading in the overall planning balance?

Nevertheless, that is the question upon which reams of this report dwell. In one of the many farcical sections, we have an argument about the extent to which a 2D photo aligns with the behaviour of the human eye, and whether biological vision focused on the clock tower would naturally blur the office tower. I don’t think they quite got as far as calling an optician as a witness during the 18 days (eighteen!) of the now-overruled inquiry that spanned across eight months, but I’m looking forward to standing in this spot with an eye patch to find the answer one day. I can’t decide whether the diagram above resembles a GSCE maths paper, or a football VAR referral with its offside lines drawn across the field of play.

As a planning outsider, I feel I can risk the ridicule of asking why we can’t determine these applications in four minutes instead of four years? If the planning committee aren’t sure, you have a VAR referral to a few experts back at government HQ, Tony Page gets called away to the video screen for another look? Back in the “sensible” world, the report features a longwinded debate on the extent of the harm, within the spectrum of less-than-substantial harms, the sight of the building has on vistas within the town centre. The word ‘harm’ appears 228 times in the report, prefixed by a diverse range of adjectives: lower, lesser, low-level, moderate, low/moderate, substantial, significant, not materially harmful, minor degree of harm… The longer you spend reading this nonsense the more like complete gibberish it becomes, although I accept to spend a Sunday evening writing it up online is more-than-substantially tragic to a modest/significant extent.

After four years, this still isn’t a complete application. It only covers essentially a set of cuboids of prescribed maximum sizes in specific locations. Later phases of Station Hill have the same status and are shown as such in the visual above. The Vastern Court developer tried to help their cause by producing an illustrative scheme of realistic buildings to help interpret their application. Mischievously or otherwise, that illustration doesn’t quite fill the cuboids to the extent that the permission would technically allow. This causes major complication through the report, with assessments of the illustrative scheme and the cuboids sometimes yielding different adjectives in front of the word ‘harm’, with resulting mass confusion. Overshadowing of low-rise homes on Vastern Road, for example, is judged more acceptable in the illustration than the cuboids. Ultimately, the secretary of state report deems this can all be resolved when the detailed final designs are submitted. The applicant uses the same argument on the clock tower views, claiming a harm would be replaced by a “modest benefit” through slender and attractive detailed design. Everyone dismissed that argument as impossible to guarantee.

Also dismissed was the point around the north-south route from station-to-river being negatively impacted by the proposed layout. Just as was found in the appeal process for the SSE site to the north, the applicant is deemed to have done the best they can in the circumstances, even though there’ll be no line of sight from one to the other.

In the end, the government probably saw this as an easy decision. Given the pressure to deliver housing, and repeated announcements on brownfield building, they can get up to 1000 homes here with relatively little controversy. There were only 17 objectors to the planning application. Try building on a golf course in Caversham and you’ll get literally thousands. The council could take it to the high court, but given the main argument against has crystallised onto a ludicrously subjective assessment of the view of a clock, I can’t see them taking the risk. The council gets a lot of grief for “all the flats they’ve built” (obviously most people neglect the point that developers build them), but they’ve taken this one 4 years deep to try to stop it. I’d consider raising a freedom of information request to see what this defence has cost them, but that would just waste time and money when they’re badly overstretched anyway, so please don’t do that.

Returning to my first question, is it a good outcome? My view is that this site, so near the station, will inevitably attract “something big”. I’d rather here and the sorting office site become a major convention centre or indoor arena – a destination making use of the fact that anyone in southern England can easily get here and back home by rail. Market forces, however, seem to value the station as a shuttle to central London’s employment and leisure. Perhaps if the flats had been rejected we might have seen an alternative use come forward? If that’s pie in the sky then I guess we take the flats and hope remaining issues can be worked through subsequently. But the bigger story is the planning process – 301 documents on the council’s planning portal, many running into hundreds of pages, an 18-day inquiry and subsequent government overrule after multiple delays. An application submitted on 27th February 2020, following lengthy consultation beforehand, finally approved over four years later.

After all that, it seems likely the site will be sold on, with its value increased thanks to planning permission being established. And the next owner will inevitably reconsider aspects of the scheme anyway. In summary, after a somewhat ironic 1500-word waffle of my own, the conclusion can only be it’s all been a not-less-than-substantial waste of time to a substantially significant degree.

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What do you think? Comments very welcome as ever…