The Council’s Planning Control Committee originally considered application CH/19/201 for the redevelopment of the Rugeley Power Station site on 15th January 2020. At this meeting elected Councillors voted to approve the application subject to conditions and subject to securing a range of requirements within a S106 legal agreement.
However, further to the submissions under application ref CH/19/201 an amendment to the application was received on Monday 11th May 2020. The application now seeks outline planning permission for the creation of a development platform and the demolition of existing office building, and environmental centre, and security gatehouse, site clearance, remediation and phased mixed-use development comprising: up to 2,300 new dwellings and residential units (use classes C3 and C2); up to 1.2 ha of mixed-use (use classes A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, C1, C2, C3, D1 and D2); up to 5 ha of employment (use classes B1a, b, c and B2); a school (All Through School or 1 no. 2 Form Entry Primary School (use class D1)); formal and informal publicly accessible open space; key infrastructure including new adoptable roads within the site and the provision of a new primary access junction on to the A513; ground and roof mounted solar panels and 2 no. existing electricity substations (132 KV and 400 KV) retained (All Matters Reserved Except Access)’.
The amendment seeks changes to allow for the potential inclusion of an All Through School (ATS) within the proposed development. This encompasses nursery, primary school provision, secondary school provision and post 16 provision for up to 200 pupils. Updated plans to reflect these changes and the production of a new Environmental Statement to consider any additional effects arising from the amended development has now been provided. An extract from the Covering Letter accompanying the amendments reads:
There is no change to the resolved to grant scheme in terms of the Applicant, the Site Boundary, the number of dwellings and residential units (which remain at up to 2,300), the level of employment land (up to 5 hectares), community and retail floorspace (with the exception of education provision), and the primary vehicular accesses.
The principal change is in relation to the potential provision of an ATS. The resolved to grant scheme includes for the provision of a 2 Form Entry Primary School on the Site (with a financial contribution towards off-site provision of additional secondary school places). This amendments submission seeks flexibility for an ‘either or’ provision – that is, provision of an ATS or provision of a 2 Form Entry Primary School.
The flexibility sought reflects that, even with the commitment and best efforts of all parties to secure an ATS on the Site, the situation that may occur that the Wave 14 application is unsuccessful and it may be necessary for the Applicant to provide the 2 Form of Entry Primary School (and a financial contribution towards secondary education).
The ATS proposed for the Site would comprise a 52-place nursery, a 2 Form of Entry Primary School, a 5 Form of Entry Secondary School and Post-16 provision for up to 200 students, together with ancillary facilities including sports pitches/courts. It is proposed that the sports pitches/courts are shared with the community, with community access outside of school hours of operation.
The amended application is accompanied by a large range of documents including a new Environmental Statement and appendices from those originally submitted. These can be viewed in full on the Council’s main application website here by searching for reference CH/19/201 or alternatively can be downloaded in full on this link:
In order to assist with the publicity of the application, the Council has selected key documents from within the amended application that are likely to be of interest to most people. These are published on this page as well as the main application page for ease of reference. These documents are available to read under the drop down sections below. Should more information be sought beyond these, please follow the above Dropbox link in the first instance.
Illustrative Masterplan & Illustrative Phasing Plan
The application is submitted as an ‘Outline Planning Application with Access Details included.’ This means the points of access to the site are proposed to be fixed as part of the application. Beyond this, the final layout, appearance of the building, scale of development and landscaping for the development are not yet proposed. Nevertheless, the Illustrative Masterplan is aimed at providing an indication of how the development be laid out and in conjunction with the Design and Access Statement documents, seeks to give the impression of how the finished development could look.
The Illustrative Phasing Plan sets out the planned phasing of the development plots.
Environmental Statement – Non Technical Summary
A Non-Technical Summary (NTS) is a concise document that provides a description of the Environmental Impact Assessment process and its findings in a manner that is easy to read and easy to understand by the general public. The purpose of the Non-Technical Summary is to summarise the findings of the wider Environmental Statement.
Environmental Statement
The Environmental Impact Assessment process is a systematic, objective and iterative process through which the likely significant effects of a project can be identified, assessed and, wherever possible, avoided or mitigated against. This process and its outcomes are then reported in an Environmental Statement that accompanies a planning application for the proposals (Please note the appendices are available on the main application system - see top of page link).
The process aims to ensure that when a local planning authority is deciding whether to grant planning permission for a project which is likely to have significant effects on the environment, the Authority does so in the full knowledge of the likely significant effects, and takes this into account in the decision making process.
In the case of Rugeley Power Station, a number of key issues of relevance to the application have been ‘Scoped In’ as part of the EIA process. These key issues represent the “main” environmental effects to which the development is likely to give rise and these are considered in detail within the Environmental Statement chapters below along with any proposed avoidance or mitigation measures.
Last Updated: 26/08/2020