Great Glen 180 Homes Recommended Despite 199 Objections

Planning officers have recommended that Harborough District Council approve up to 180 homes on farmland at the western edge of Great Glen, about eight miles north-west of Market Harborough. The recommendation stands despite 199 letters of objection.

The application, 25/01564/OUT, is from DWH East Midlands, trading as David Wilson Homes. It goes to the council’s planning committee at 6.30pm on Tuesday 8 September in the Council Chamber. The meeting will be livestreamed.

The outline application covers 20.29 hectares of land south of London Road and north of the A6. Officers describe it as open countryside. The scheme includes:

• up to 180 homes on a single 6.23-hectare parcel, at about 29 dwellings per hectare
• 13.6 hectares kept as open space
• a new vehicle access off London Road, the only detail being decided at this stage
• play space, car parking, land for allotments and drainage

Everything else, including layout, appearance, scale and landscaping, would come back later as reserved matters.

Why officers say yes

The recommendation turns on housing supply rather than on the merits of the fields.

Harborough District Council cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites. The report puts the published position at 3.1 years, from October 2025. The council’s assessed housing need has risen from 510 homes a year to 723 under the government’s revised standard method.

That triggers what planners call the tilted balance. Under the National Planning Policy Framework, permission should be granted unless the harm significantly and demonstrably outweighs the benefits. Officers say it applies twice over here: once because the council has no up-to-date plan and no five-year supply, and again because the Great Glen Neighbourhood Plan was made in January 2020 and is now more than five years old.

The report is blunt about the consequence. “Significant positive weight must be applied to the provision of housing.”

The harm officers accept

Officers do not claim the scheme is harmless. They find:

• harm at the lower end of the scale to the setting of 26 London Road, a Grade II listed building, and St Cuthbert’s Church, which is Grade II*
• harm towards the middle of the scale to the ridge and furrow earthworks on the site, which they treat as a non-designated heritage asset
• limited negative weight for the landscape effects

Harm to the setting of listed buildings must be given “considerable importance and weight” under section 66 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. Officers conclude the housing benefits outweigh it anyway, because the tilted balance applies.

On traffic, officers side with the developer. They find the highway network can take the modelled flows, that the access is acceptable, and that the effects are not severe either on their own or cumulatively. Highways is given neutral weight.

What the developer would pay

A section 106 agreement would come with the permission. The cash requests set out in the report total more than £3.7 million, and several items are still to be settled.

The education request is the big one: £3,217,871.18 to the county council, plus a land contribution still to be agreed. Within it the report sets out:

• £280,846.80 for early years, covering 15.3 places at £18,356 each
• £1,616,288 towards a new two-form-entry primary school, based on 53 primary pupils at £30,496 a place
• £1,252,497.96 towards a new 1,200-place secondary school, based on about 30 secondary pupils
• £42,904.86 and £58,702.32 towards special school places, primary and secondary

The county’s reasoning is worth reading twice. It says the development “does not form part of Harborough District Council’s emerging Local Plan”, so its education impact has not been planned for, and existing spare capacity “should not be regarded as surplus capacity available to accommodate additional unplanned development”.

The other cash requests are £213,300 for community facilities, £79,239 for indoor sports, £174,240 for healthcare from the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board on the basis of 435.6 extra patients, £23,911.20 for waste services at £132.84 per home, and £10,150 for monitoring biodiversity gain. Highways, libraries, open space and monitoring fees are all marked to be confirmed.

Separately, 40% of the homes would be affordable, which on 180 homes means 72 affordable dwellings. Half would be transferred to a registered provider before half the market homes are built.

What the objectors say

The council sent 70 consultation letters to nearby properties and ran a second round in June 2026 when extra information arrived. It received 199 objections in total, from Great Glen and from Little Stretton, Stoughton, Gaulby, Thurnby, Houghton on the Hill, Illston on the Hill, Newton Harcourt and Kibworth, as well as from Oadby, Wigston and Leicester outside the district.

Great Glen Parish Council accepts that the amended submission is “a substantial improvement” and no longer treats air quality, noise, construction methods or heritage as the main issues. It still raises five points:

• no clear assessment of how London Road would work with the new access alongside Leicester Grammar School, Crick’s Retreat, the adjoining Davidsons development and other committed growth
• unresolved operational concerns raised by Leicester Grammar School about traffic modelling and highway safety
• doubt over the timing, sequencing and long-term delivery of the mitigation package
• permanent urbanisation of countryside that forms part of the village’s rural setting
• whether the drainage system can be maintained for the lifetime of the development

The parish council’s position is that if those matters cannot be resolved, permission should be refused.

Councillor Phil King, the county councillor for Gartree, lodged a formal objection in December. He cites conflict with the local plan and the neighbourhood plan, highway and infrastructure impacts, flood risk, landscape harm and prematurity, and singles out “the absence of any financial contribution towards A6 junction improvements at the Kibworths”. Councillor David Page also objected, on the London Road and A6 corridor. A campaign group, Stop the New Town, submitted a 37-page objection.

There is history here. An outline application for up to 100 homes on the site was refused in August 2017, against officer advice, on heritage grounds. That decision predates the current local plan.

Great Glen is not finished with this either. The report notes an adjacent site next to the Leicester Grammar School access is a draft allocation in the emerging local plan for around 450 homes, and the county’s early years calculation refers to two other Great Glen developments totalling 458 homes.

Also on Tuesday: 900 homes at Bushby

The same meeting deals with a bigger scheme, and there the officer advice is the opposite.

Mulberry Strategic Land applied for up to 900 homes, a primary school, a local centre and open space on 64.71 hectares south of Uppingham Road at Bushby, about twelve miles north-west of Market Harborough on the Leicester side of the district. The council did not determine it in time, so the applicant appealed on grounds of non-determination on 17 July 2026.

Members are being asked to confirm that, had they been able to decide it, they would have refused permission. The single reason given is highways: that the applicant has not shown the impacts on transport capacity, congestion and highway safety can be mitigated.

The Planning Inspectorate has set the timetable, and one date matters to residents. Comments from interested parties must reach the Inspectorate by 29 September 2026. The inquiry itself is expected to start on 3 March 2027 and to run about six days. A case management conference is set for 23 October.

Thurnby and Bushby Parish Council and Stoughton Parish Council have both objected.

The rest of the agenda

The Great Bowden item is the council applying to itself. It wants to redevelop its own depot on Welham Lane, a 2.62-hectare site just outside Market Harborough, with a new maintenance building, welfare and office accommodation, fleet parking, refuelling and a wash-down area. The council’s weekly food waste collections start in April 2027, and the fleet has to be housed somewhere.

Members also receive a planning enforcement update, which includes a section 215 notice on land next to Salisbury House.

What it means for you

The deadline to register to speak has passed. Requests had to be in by 12 noon two working days before the meeting, which was Friday. The speakers list is normally published by 12 noon on the working day before, so it should appear on Monday.

You can still watch. The meeting is livestreamed from the Council Chamber at 6.30pm on Tuesday, and the full agenda pack is online.

If Bushby is the one that concerns you, that decision is no longer the district council’s. Comments go to the Planning Inspectorate and the deadline is 29 September.

Approval on Tuesday would not put a spade in the ground. This is an outline application, so layout, appearance, scale and landscaping still have to come back for approval, and a section 106 agreement has to be signed first. Our planning page tracks what is in the pipeline across the district.

Sources

• Planning committee, 8 September 2026: agenda and papers, Harborough District Council, for the agenda, the officer reports and the livestream.
• Committee report on 25/01564/OUT, land south of London Road, Great Glen, for the recommendation, the site figures, the 199 objections, the consultee and parish council responses, the planning balance and the section 106 table at Appendix B.
• Committee report on 25/01587/OUT, land south of Uppingham Road, Bushby, for the non-determination appeal, the recommended reason for refusal and the Planning Inspectorate timetable.
• Planning committee public speaking, Harborough District Council, for the registration deadline and the speakers list.