On 18 March the District Council received an outline planning application to construct up to 17 dwellings on a green field, located at the eastern edge of Harberton.
And as the applicants reminded officers:
‘Since the publication of the revised NPPF, South Hams District Council is unable to demonstrate a five-year housing land supply with the supply being 2.53 years. As a result, the presumption in favour of sustainable development (the ‘tilted balance’) under Paragraph 11(d) of the NPPF 2024 is engaged.
‘The tilted balance shifts the presumption in favour of sustainable development. In practical terms, this means planning permission should be granted unless the adverse impacts of the proposal significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits when assessed against the NPPF as a whole.’
Superficially at least, the applicants are correct and the District Council will have little option but to approve the application.
Indeed, the Parish Council have already offered their conditional support and, of the 17 dwellings, as many as five according to the applicant might be ‘affordable’, ‘with the final number to be confirmed at Reserved Matters stage when a detailed site layout is defined’.
But crucially the Parish Council have also insisted that before any consent is given ‘A full drain survey should be carried out to ensure that the SWW sewage system can cope and the development does not cause any more issues in any other section of the village’.
And a mere nine days after the application was submitted the Environment Agency published their 2024 Storm Overflow Annual Return.
It revealed the Waste Water Treatment Works and the Work’s Storm Overflow between them dumped sewage in the the Harberton Stream on a combined 233 occasions. Those spills in total lasted for around 3,603 hours – or the equivalent of approximately 25 minutes of every hour daily throughout the year!
Even so, those numbers represented a marked improvement on recent years. For example in 2023 Harberton experienced a combined total of 327 spills collectively lasting a total of 4,660 hours; in 2022 260 spills lasting 4,020 hours; and in 2021 324 spills lasting 4,860 hours.
And last year’s improvements may well have been due to the operational improvements that South West Water say they have now completed. However the cause of the ‘high spill frequency’ at the Treatment Works has been identified as its hydraulic capacity.
In other words the problem is likely to have little if anything to do with inadequate maintenance or the overflow lacking capacity, but more with the Treatment Works itself being incapable of coping with existing demands, so causing the overflow to operate prematurely.
According to the Annual Return a Storm Overflow Assessment Framework investigation is currently being undertaken, almost certainly by the Environment Agency. Consequently the outcome of that investigation should be awaited, and South West Water should be asked to confirm the sewage system in Harberton has sufficient capacity to cope with the increase in flow from the development without there being any increase in the probability of storm spills, before the District Council approves the application.
And although the applicants make the point that ‘South West Water have confirmed that the public network can accommodate a connection for the proposed development’ that only means a connection is feasible, not that the network has the capacity to cope with any increase in flow.
Nor is it just the increase in effluent entering the system from the development that might prove problematic. The applicants are also proposing a Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SuDS) for surface water management. But as yet no infiltration testing has been undertaken to establish if this can be implemented.
If it is not then any surface water run-off from the development will either have to discharge in to a surface waterbody, in all probability the Harberton Stream, or in to a surface water sewer, highway drain or another drainage system or, failing that, in to a combined sewer.
Yet as far as the applicants are concerned the necessary infiltration testing need again only take place at Reserved Matters stage, after the application has been approved, and by which time it might be too late to prevent waters from having to be discharged in to the Stream or a sewer.
So it’s perhaps not surprising, given the history of flooding in Harberton, that the Draft Harberton Neighbourhood Plan insists ‘Development proposals should demonstrate that their impact on the existing fouls and surface water system has been assessed and that they will not cause adverse downstream impacts from water discharge on local streams, leats, flood channels and neighbouring properties’.
As yet, no such assessment has been undertaken.
Noticeably Joint Local Plan Policy DEV35.8 makes it clear that: ‘Development will not be permitted without confirmation that sewage/wastewater treatment facilities can accommodate or will be improved to accommodate the new development, in advance of the development taking place’.
That confirmation is clearly required. Despite there being no doubt more genuinely affordable housing is needed, and that is not necessarily what is on offer here, it must not be allowed to come at the cost of our environment and the further pollution of our already sewage-ridden waterways.
Quite simply there should be no presumption in favour of pollution.
