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Planning and Regulatory Committee - Wednesday, 18 December 2024 10.30 am

December 18, 2024 View on council website Watch video of meeting
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Summary

The meeting considered two applications, the first for a new Special Educational Needs building at St. John the Baptist School, Woking, and the second for an application for Town or Village Green (TVG) status for Leach Grove Wood in Leatherhead. The committee approved the application to build a new Special Educational Needs building, and rejected the application for TVG status for Leach Grove Wood.

The Proposed Special Educational Needs Building at St John the Baptist School

Surrey County Council has applied for planning permission to erect and use a new one-storey Special Educational Needs building at St John the Baptist School, Woking.

The committee heard that there is a shortage of suitable educational facilities for children with special educational needs in the Woking area. As a result many children have to travel long distances to access appropriate educational facilities. In particular, Woking has seen a growth in the number of children with autism, communication and interaction needs, who need a specialist school placement.

The new building would accommodate 30 pupils, and would be located in the south-eastern corner of the existing school site, on a tarmacked access road and part of a playing field. The application includes a new 37-space car park which would be accessed from Coniston Road.

Planning permission is required because the application site is located in the Metropolitan Green Belt. Inappropriate development in the Green Belt is harmful and should not normally be approved. Planning permission should only be granted in very special circumstances, where the benefits clearly outweigh any harm.

Officers recommended that the committee grant planning permission for the proposal. They recognised that, as it is a new building on Green Belt land, there would be harm to the Green Belt. However, they considered that the harm would be outweighed by the significant educational need for the new building. In particular they noted that the site is already partially developed, and that the new building would be visually screened from the surrounding area by an established area of dense woodland.

Taking this into account, Officers consider that development plan policies in relation to Green Belt would be satisfied. 1

The committee unanimously approved the application.

The Application for Village Green Status at Leach Grove Wood

The committee considered an application for Town or Village Green (TVG) status for land at Leach Grove Wood in Leatherhead.

The application was originally submitted by Philippa Cargill in 2013, following her discovery that the land, which she and many other locals used regularly for recreation, was owned by the NHS, and that they were considering selling it for development.

The land had been owned by Surrey County Council as part of Leatherhead Hospital but had been transferred to the Secretary of State for Health in 1993. It was subsequently transferred to Epsom Healthcare NHS Trust in 1993, Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust in 1999, East Elmbridge and Mid Surrey Primary Care Trust in 2002, Surrey Primary Care Trust in 2006, and finally to NHS Property Services Limited in 2013.

The application was initially accepted by the committee in 2015. However, the decision was judicially reviewed by NHS Property Services Limited who argued that registration as a TVG would conflict with their statutory functions. This argument is based on the legal principle of statutory incompatibility. Statutory incompatibility means that, where land is owned by a public authority for statutory purposes, this ownership may be incompatible with the registration of the land as a TVG. This principle was established in the Newhaven case in 2015.

The legal argument about statutory incompatibility went all the way to the Supreme Court who, in 2019, found that NHS Property Services Limited was right, and that the registration should not have taken place. As a result, the committee was directed to redetermine the application.

Surrey County Council officers recommended that the committee reject the application, on the basis of the Supreme Court's ruling. They explained that the Supreme Court’s view was that, while the applicant has shown that local people had used the land regularly for recreation for the required 20 year period, this was not enough to justify registration. This was because NHS Property Services Limited’s statutory powers in relation to the land as owners meant that registration as a TVG was incompatible.

Although the application has been found to meet the requirements in section 15 of the Commons Act 2006 for registration as a village green, it fails on the ground of statutory incompatibility. In the judgement of the Supreme Court, where there is an incompatibility between the statutory purposes for which the land is held and the use, the provisions of the Commons Act 2006 are not applicable.

Councillor Ernest Mallett MBE said that the Supreme Court had “handcuffed” the committee and that they had no choice but to reject the application. He said that in 2015, when the committee originally considered the application, they had accepted it because at the time it appeared that NHS Property Services Limited’s ownership of the land was “low-grade” and they had not been using the site. This contrasted, he said, with their position in 2024, following the Supreme Court’s clarification of the concept of statutory incompatibility.

The committee unanimously agreed to reject the application.


  1. OFFICER REPORT_SCC_REF_2024-0136 FINAL Page 20, paragraph 212