Future of Kays site is out of our hands

This is because a decision was not made quickly enough on an application for outline planning permission.

The site owners have now lodged an appeal which will be heard by a government agency.

The former catalogue firm’s HQ in Bransford Road, Worcester, is currently earmarked for employment use in the Local Plan and councillors want it to stay this way.

However, developers want to build 160 homes on the site because they believe there is no realistic prospect of employment use.

Worcester City Council’s planning committee believes the current economic climate makes it impossible to make a decision on such a key site.

Chairman of the planning committee Councillor Robert Rowden said: “I am very concerned about the employment situation.

“If we are talking about all these houses, where are all these people going to work?

“We have lost land in the porcelain works in St Martin’s Gate and Coombers. There is not very much in St John’s from a work point of view.

“It does strike me that employment land in that part of the city would be a good thing.”

The saga began when site owner Arndale Properties Limited submitted an application for outline planning permission to the city council in April. The application is to change the use from employment land to residential and build homes.

The four-hectare site, which occupies roughly five per cent of Worcester’s employment land, is currently designated as a key employment site which planners say should be protected for the future.

However, even though the site is designated for employment use, this alone is not enough to stop homes being built.

Other factors including viability, impact of the site, location and quality must be considered.

Because it was such a major application, the council wanted to gather as much information as possible and started an inquiry into its future use.

The planning committee should have made a decision to grant or reject the application by August.

But because the inquiry took so long, the committee missed this deadline.

In planning terms this is called a “non-determination”. An appeal has now been lodged by Arndale’s against this non-determination.

At a special committee meeting councillors were asked what their decision would have been if an appeal had not been lodged.

They decided under the current economic conditions the site was not viable for either housing or employment.

“In these abnormal circumstances, where there is no immediate prospect of the site coming forward for any form of development, it would be inappropriate to settle the long-term future of the site,” their recommendation says.

With the councillors’ recommendation, planning officers will now prepare a case for the appeal outlining why permission should not be granted. A decision will then be made by the planning inspectorate, a government agency responsible for deciding appeals.

The appeal is likely to take place in March 2009, although a date has not been set. Kays was the former headquarters of catalogue firm Littlewoods Shop Direct which moved in five years ago. When it closed in February last year, 600 people lost their jobs.