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We start the week with another article free for everyone about the strange case of a planning application where Somerset Council has quietly backed down in the face of a legal challenge whilst pretending to the outside world that it hasn’t…..
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On 17 June 2025, councillors on the Area South Planning Committee approved a decision to build 100 houses in the village of Keinton Mandeville. For reference, the application is 22/01720/OUT and described as: “Outline planning application with all matters reserved except for access for a residential development of up to 100 dwellings (including affordable housing) with associated public open space, community orchard, allotments and potential additional parking for the existing village hall, with details of layout, scale, appearance and landscaping reserved.”
Bizarrely, the application site (outlined in red) wasn’t even coterminous with the edge of the village as the plan below illustrates:
That leaves another large chunk of countryside which is now an obvious target for further development.
Yet even the one hundred houses proposed here may not sound a lot. But context is everything. Assuming an average of three people per household, it would add 300 new residents to the current population of the village of 1215 souls – or to put it another way, 25% in a single development.
This happens a lot in Area South. The one factor that never seems to merit consideration is the impact of building a large village extension on the existing community. In particular the lack of infrastructure, locally or in the vicinity, to support the new housing.
the lack of infrastructure, locally or in the vicinity
If you were to ask planners to consider adding, say, 7,000 houses in a single development to our county town of Taunton (which would equally add around 25% to the population), you would get a very different reaction. A lot of consultation, umming and ahing, and in all probability a refusal for being out of proportion to housing need and infrastructure.
But do the same thing to a village, and that is seemingly fair game. Just because the numbers are smaller does not make the impact and the problems created any different.
It can be very hard to get this simple idea across to planners and the councillors. Even so, the final vote on the proposal was a close run thing. The proposal to approve the application, put by Cllrs Peter Seib and Andy Kendall, was approved by 7 votes to 5.
However, Keinton Mandeville villagers were determined not to take the decision lying down. They formed a group of residents: Stop Housing Obliterating the Character of Keinton (SHOCK) to mobilise their opposition to the planned development. By 2 September they had called a public meeting to discuss raising funds to launch a legal challenge to the decision by the Planning Committee.
No doubt alarmed at the prospect of a legal challenge, not only did the two councillors representing the community turn up (Cllrs Tim Kerly and Stephen Page) but so did two cabinet members, Cllrs Richard Wilkins (transport) and Mike Rigby (planning).
Cllrs Kerly, Rigby and Wilkins all spoke to the meeting trying to dissuade residents from going down a legal route as, in their view, they would be unlikely to win.
Mike Rigby also pointed out that a judge could find against the Council but, unless the judge found a major flaw in the decision, the Council would be able to tweak the decision to be acceptable. And the community would still have a development, having paid a lot of money for a Judicial Review to try to stop it.
Residents were unmoved. They repeatedly pointed to what they believed to be serious errors of fact in the officer’s report. They noted 500 people had written objections to the plans. After the councillors had had their say they started down the route of setting up a vehicle to raise funds. Partly to see if the appetite within the village was there to raise a large sum and fight the council.
And then things went quiet.
The village did raise funds, appointed a legal representative but of big announcements, well none were there to be seen.
However having followed the story, we checked in on the Somerset Council planning portal from time to time to see if anything was moving. With the plans approved, only the s106 agreement needed to be sorted in order for the developer to get moving to the next stage.
Suddenly, from 5 May 2026, we noticed a sudden flurry of new planning documents starting to appear on the council’s planning portal for the Keinton Mandeville application.
a sudden flurry of new planning documents
It seems as if all the statutory and council consultees who were asked for comments on the Planning application in 2025 were being asked again for the same information in 2026.
What was going on? It was almost as if the council were restarting the planning application process.
We approached the council’s press team: “Last year the Planning Committee South approved a development of 100 houses in Keinton Mandevilleat its June 2025 meeting.
Now it appears that exactly the same planning application has been referred back for reconsideration by the same committee.
Can we please understand why this has happened and why the original decision has not been sustained?”
Nothing to see here, they said. To be more precise, their spokesperson responded that: “The committee agreed a resolution to grant permission pending completion of a 106 agreement. Before the decision is issued, the local planning authority will review the supporting documentation to ensure full consideration of the relevant planning considerations.”
Well, that’s not usually what happens once the application has been approved. That’s meant to happen before the application is approved. It’s kind of the point of the process.
So we asked again: I’m sure the documentation was reviewed, but that does not explain why it was sent back?
What was in the documentation that prompted the council to, effectively, reverse its previous decision?
Can you also confirm that:
No s106 documents have been agreed and signed with the developer
That you have written to the developer and the letter is in the public domain
Back came the press team, adamant that their original statement stood: “Our understanding is that it was granted pending the further details requested and the 106 agreement, so in simple terms the committee needs to review these as part of the process.”
But this is simply not the normal process. Once the committee has voted to approve, the officers get on with sorting out the details. They just don’t revert to the full committee.
the officers get on with sorting out the details
Something just didn’t feel right.
Now we should say that this is not the fault of the press team. The way things work is that they liaise with officers, get a response and send it back to the journalist asking the questions. But to a greater or lesser extent they are reporting back what they have been told, not giving an opinion of their own.
Either way, we realised more digging would be necessary.
So we went back to basics and started to wade through all the new documents on the planning portal from May 2026 onwards in the hope of finding something that would give some clues as to what was going on.
And eventually we stumbled across the whole truth of the matter.
An email between Planning South and Planning Validation South spilt the beans. The crucial paragraph of the email reads: “the Parish Council have engaged a Solicitor and have written to the Council warning that the decision to support the scheme was legally flawed and that if a number of alleged deficiencies in the report were not remedied then any future grant of planning permission would be challenged by Judicial Review.
We have instructed Counsel to look at the case and he has advised that we update the report and re-present the case to the Planning Committee for their further consideration. As part of this process we need our consultees to review their previous comments and advise whether or not their comments need updating due to a change in circumstances since June 2025.”
he has advised that we update the report and re-present the case
In other words the decision taken last time is indeed being reversed, or should we say cancelled because actually the council have realised that if they proceed there is a real danger that the decision will turn out to be legally flawed.
And Somerset Council have confirmed elsewhere that any new decision by the Area South Planning Committee will override the approval decision made last summer.
To be precise, we now know that:
the Parish Council will be asked for their opinion as a consultee,
that a new officer’s report will be prepared,
that it will be submitted to Area South’s Planning Committee
that a full debate will be had on the application as if it was a new application
members of the public and parish councillors will be allowed to address the committee in the usual way
And any decision made by councillors will override and replace the original decision (though of course councillors may simply make the same decision)
So while the council ask consultees: “to review their previous comments and advise whether or not their comments need updating” one can only wonder if all the objectors have also been written to and also invited to update and or revise their objections. And if not, then will the original objections be treated as being valid for the second review of the planning application?
Residents wanting to object would be well advised to reprise their objections from the last time the planning application was presented to ensure the points that have been well made, are not missed.
As for other consultees, most have been content with the information already submitted, but Ecology have pointed out that the ecological surveys undertaken in 2021 are now so far out of date as to be invalid.
And the site is known to play host to great crested newts, dormice, grass snakes, and badgers. So new surveys will have to be produced by the applicant.
We got in touch with CPRE Somerset who were one of the objectors to the original plans and asked for their reaction. Fletcher Robinson told us: “CPRE Somerset’s main concern is that our distinctive historic villages should not be turned into towns with few facilities by being swamped with development on this scale, thereby losing their distinctive rural character , as well as their open spaces. This decision for 100 houses in Keinton Mandeville was taken with scant regard as to whether the primary school could cope, or whether the historic predominantly linear settlement pattern along the lanes would be lost, or whether much loved village footpaths with fabulous views would be boxed in by housing.”
SHOCK welcomes the withdrawal of planning permission
We also went back to local group SHOCK to ask for their reaction to the apparent volte face by the council. They were unsurprisingly pleased by the turn of events: “SHOCK welcomes the withdrawal of planning permission for the LVA100 development.
The decision makes clear that pro-development councillors are prepared to compromise objectivity and restrict debate on issues such as pedestrian access, sewage problems and school infrastructure to achieve unrealistic housing targets at any cost.
In several areas, the planning report’s ‘conclusions’ about Keinton Mandeville are now at odds with the settlement analysis in the Local Plan consultation documents; as a result, it is unsurprising that Somerset’s planning decisions have attracted widespread concerns about poor standards and a lack of objectivity.”
Then we approached both Somerset Councillors who represent the village, Cllr Kerly and Cllr Page both of whom are LibDems.
Cllr Page responded to us noting: “I welcome the decision to refer the application to build 100 houses in Keinton Mandeville back to the Area South Planning Committee for further scrutiny.”
So despite the warnings of councillors and cabinet members, the legal challenge made by SHOCK to the original application has produced dividends. The council’s own legal advice appears to have been to start again as the original decision was to some extent or other unsafe.
It is just a pity that the council have been unwilling to admit this and instead put up something of a smokescreen, presumably to save face.
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