The Wern: harm acknowledged, permission granted
A field the council's own evidence called unsuitable is now approved for up to 54 homes. Why the appeal succeeded, and why it will not be the last.
On 15 June a Planning Inspector allowed an appeal for up to 54 homes on land north of The Wern, on the western edge of Lechlade (appeal ref 6002824). The permission is outline, access only, but the principle is now settled, and the principle was the whole fight.
The striking part isn’t that the Inspector overruled local objectors. She didn’t. She accepted the scheme would harm the rural character of the site and the setting of Butler’s Court, a Grade II listed farmhouse, and that it conflicted with both the Cotswold Local Plan and the Lechlade Neighbourhood Plan. Then she granted it anyway.
That isn’t a contradiction. It’s the formula working as designed. Cotswold can demonstrate just 1.8 years of housing land supply against the five years national policy requires. Below five, the “tilted balance” engages: the council’s own protective policies, including DS4 (the policy meant to stop open-market housing in open countryside), lose their weight, and permission becomes the default unless the harm is grave enough to clear a deliberately high bar. The harm here was real. It was simply outweighed by the houses.
So the council didn’t lose the argument. It won most of it and lost the appeal. Of its six reasons for refusal, three fell away before the decision even landed: two on ecology, once Hallam Land supplied fresh surveys, and one on affordable housing once the Section 106 was signed. On the two that remained, character and heritage, the Inspector agreed with the council. It made no difference to the outcome.
And it will keep happening, because the trap is self-reinforcing. Cotswold physically can’t deliver 1,036 homes a year, a target raised 147% overnight, so its land supply stays below five years, so the next speculative application on the next “unsuitable” site arrives with the same built-in advantage. One for 150 homes is already lodged on the other side of Lechlade. And local government reorganisation could delay the up-to-date Local Plan that would end this by five to seven years.
The Wern is not an exception. It’s a template: the first site in the district to run all the way to completion.
If you want to understand the machinery behind it, and why that 1,036 figure isn’t really measuring local housing need at all, the full breakdown of the local plan’s key issues is worth a read. It’s data-first and fully sourced, not a rant. Read it before the next application lands.
Sources: Appeal Decision ref 6002824 (Land North of The Wern, Lechlade), Planning Inspectorate, 15 June 2026; Cotswold District Council planning committee (application 24/03501/OUT), July 2025; CDC Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment, 2021; CDC Housing Land Supply Report, June 2025.