Who runs Leeds, our elected councillors, or unelected bureaucrats at the Planning Department?

This Thursday, the 12th August, the councillors of Plans Panel West led by Councillor Neil Taggart, will decide applications from the Grammar School at Leeds to build on the former Leeds Girls High School playing fields at Headingley. Logic dictates that the councillors will refuse the applications, since Leeds City Council’s Unitary Development Plan gives N6 Protected status to all three Leeds Girls High playing pitches. But factors other than logic are at work. At a meeting of a planning committee last October, senior planning officer Christine Naylor told Plans Panel West that the Leeds Girls High School playing fields are “brownfield sites” and therefore ripe for development. What Ms Naylor said is at odds with national planning guidance. Planning Policy Guidance 17 clearly states at paragraph 14, “Parks, recreation grounds, playing fields and allotments must not be regarded as previously developed land″. According to Manchester’s Head of Planning in a report he submitted last year to a Manchester City Council Scrutiny Board, “National planning policy in Planning Policy Guidance Note 17 (PPG17) provides clear guidance that playing fields must not be considered as previously developed land or as it is more commonly known ‘brownfield’ land. In planning terms school playing fields are therefore ‘greenfield’ sites that fall within the general definition and protection given to all defined playing fields.”

The Unitary Development Plan gives N6 Protected status to the Leeds Girls High School playing fields out of recognition that Hyde Park and Headingley are deprived in terms of playing pitch provision. N6 status is given irrespective of who owns pitches, or whether the public has ever had access to them. Not only does the UDP protect these pitches from development, but via policy N3 it confers a duty on the local authority to acquire them for the community should the opportunity arise. Such an opportunity has arisen now. With the girls’ school having gone to Alwoodley, the way is clear for the Council to acquire the Protected Playing Pitches at the Headingley site. But instead of trying to protect the playing fields, so that they can be purchased for the use of local people, Leeds City Council’s planning department is recommending to the councillors of Plans Panel West that they give their approval to the applications to build on the playing fields.

I call on the councillors of Plans Panel West when they meet this Thursday, not to listen to the planning department, but instead, to stand up for the policies laid down in the UDP and in so doing, to stand up for the people of Hyde Park and Headingley. In this way, they will make it clear that it is our elected representatives who run this city, and not an unelected bureaucratic elite which apparently doesn’t even know the difference between a brownfield site and a greenfield site.