Historical Interim Development Orders

Claire Young Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

“A monstrosity”, “the giant greenhouse”,

“like living next to a large prison”

and

“like ‘War of the Worlds’, it just kept getting bigger and bigger”.

Those are just a few of the words that my constituents in the village of Pilning have used to describe a gigantic new warehouse being built close to their homes. In a debate about historical planning consents, I will inevitably have to talk about some pretty dry planning matters, but I want to start by setting out the very real human impact that one such consent is having on the people of Pilning. Long time resident Sue said to the media:

“How have they been allowed to build it so close to our properties? It’s made everything dark, the constant noise and dust… And what about the flood plain? Where is all the water going to go?”

Simone said:

“I feel so upset. We have never drawn our curtains. Now you feel like you have no privacy… When they started the piling work the whole house was shaking.”

--- Later in debate ---

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Jade Botterill.)

[Claire Young]

Residents of Pilning woke up one day to find piling work taking place on the edge of their village for a massive, stadium-sized warehouse, which they have dubbed the mega-shed. It now looms over their homes. Not only is it over 20 metres high, but the land on which it is built has been raised, making it even more imposing. It sits around 150 metres from the closest houses at Cranmoor Green in Pilning. It has robbed them of light, it impacts on visual amenity, and with the land raised and concreted over, it leaves them fearing that their homes will now be at greater risk of flooding. Residents worry about light and noise pollution, with the 24/7 nature of modern warehouse and distribution centres, refrigerated vehicles running while they unload, forklift trucks with warning bleepers, and HGVs arriving around the clock. They worry about the additional traffic that it will draw through the country roads that surround the site, which are already overwhelmed with heavy traffic.

So far, so familiar—our modern lives have led to huge growth in large scale warehousing across the country. However, what makes this particular case all the harder for residents to take is that the developers did not have to make a full planning application, which would have allowed all the residents’ concerns to be taken into consideration and properly assessed. That is because the work has been undertaken under historical planning consents first granted nearly 70 years ago, and that only required a reserved matters application that could look at a very limited set of issues. It does not end with this warehouse, because those consents would allow many more such warehouses to be built near Pilning, Severn Beach and Easter Compton. As one resident put it:

“It’s just so big and so impactful and affecting people’s lives. The issue is, it seems there’s nothing we can do about it.”

In 1957 and 1958, planning permission was granted to Imperial Chemical Industries to facilitate the expansion of chemical, storage, and distribution industries on an area covering over 1,000 hectares alongside and out into the Severn estuary, in what is now my Thornbury and Yate constituency. At this point I must clarify that these were general development orders, not interim development orders, but I will be returning to the latter shortly, as I am sure you will be pleased to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker, given the title of the debate. Those consents were effectively hybrid applications that allowed development without any further planning applications for a large part of the site, as happened with the building of a new Amazon warehouse, and they required a reserved matters application in the remaining parts of the site, including the land next to Pilning.

That was part of a big post-war push to industrialise. The local area looked very different then. There was no M4, no M5, and no Severn bridges. Filton airfield was operating. There was an expectation of goods being brought in and out via the estuary, which was why the development area extended out into it. The lorries that would have moved goods about that were not being transported via the estuary were considerably smaller than modern HGVs. Pilning itself was smaller and Cranmoor Green did not exist.

The permissions are very open, and lacking in conditions by modern standards. The area is loosely described, and the only red line drawn on a map is at such a scale that the thickness of the line represents 100 metres to 150 metres on the ground. On those parts of the site where reserved matters applications are required, the only things that can be considered are the layout, design, and external appearance of the buildings. Planners cannot consider access, parking, ecology, biodiversity net gain, residential amenity, flood risks—the list goes on. Also, the council cannot use a section 106 agreement or receive community infrastructure levy to mitigate the impacts of any development. The world has moved on in the last 70 years, but that planning consent remains extant, despite efforts to challenge it. I am afraid Madam Deputy Speaker that this is where we get into the driest of planning matters.

A memorandum that the House of Commons Library found for me highlights that the 1957 and 1958 consents were granted without a time limit, and that although section 91 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 introduced time limits, those do not apply to permission granted by a development order. In any case, ICI had developed on a small proportion of the land, so implementation had been started.

In 1992, AstraZeneca purchased the site from ICI. A planning committee report from 30 September 2011 says that South Gloucestershire council challenged the permission in 2000, but it was found sound and capable of implementation in its current form by the courts in 2003. There was a further Secretary of State decision in 2022, when Redrow appealed against the non-determination of an application, which also confirmed the permission extant and capable of implementation.

In 2011, the Cresswell review was undertaken to see if the permission ran contrary to the environmental designations affecting the area. It identified that habitat loss would occur and identified potential sites for mitigation. The public authorities chose the two most impactful options and have implemented those at public expense, not the expense of the developer.

In response to recent media coverage of the mega-shed, a Government spokesperson said:

“Councils are ultimately responsible for reviewing old permissions if the development is no longer suitable and deciding whether action is necessary.”

But what powers do councils actually have to do this? They have already tried the judicial review route and the consent was found to be extant.

The local residents’ action group takes issue with the council’s interpretation of the case, but in many cases residents were unaware of the development until it was too late to mount a judicial review, and no other avenue is open to them. I believe that it will take Government action to resolve this situation and restore some control to the local planning authority. There is precedent, and this is where I finally come to interim development orders.

IDO consents were permissions granted between 1943 and 1948 for mineral extraction. The Planning and Compensation Act 1991 created a process through which old mining and mineral extraction permissions authorised by an IDO consent could be updated with modern conditions. The Act required holders of IDO consents as at 1991 to apply to the mineral planning authority to register that old permission, as it was granted before the modern planning system, and then to apply for determination of the conditions to which the permission was to be subject. The planning policy underpinning Act states:

“The Government takes the view that this is an important opportunity to secure improved operating and environmental standards. Minerals are vital to the economy but it is essential that they are extracted in an environmentally acceptable away”.

Similar statements could be made about warehousing and the modern economy. No compensation was paid to the holders of IDO consents.

Although the legislation covered just about any condition, the Government guidance said that for working sites, a distinction should be drawn between environment and amenity aspects, where new conditions should not affect the asset value, and conditions that would fundamentally affect the economic structure of the operation. The latter should be done under mineral planning authority review.

Separately, under the Environment Act 1995, there was a review of old mineral permissions: ROMPs. This is a separate procedure that effectively does the same thing—modernises old mineral planning consents—but for consents granted in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. That Act imposed a requirement on mineral planning authorities to periodically review the planning permissions of mines to ensure that they stay up to date to modern standards. This legislation said that if the new conditions would prejudice the asset value or viability “to an unreasonable degree” the applicant could claim compensation.

The Labour Government issued revised minerals planning guidance MPG4 in August 1997, which provided guidance on the Town and Country Planning (Compensation for Restrictions on Mineral Working and Mineral Waste Depositing) Regulations 1997, and section 198 of the Planning Act 2008 made changes to the process for appeals relating to old mining permission granted under IDOs. So through a series of legislation and planning guidance, we have a process in place for the pre-1948 mineral permissions—the IDO process—and one for the post-1948 mineral permissions. However, there is no process in place for other blanket consents that need modernising.

I ask the Minister to review the Severnside consents and to consider creating a process analogous to those I have just described for reviewing historical blanket consents that have not been fully implemented. To be absolutely clear, I am not suggesting that most old consents be reviewed and modern conditions imposed—only those that have not been implemented on all the parcels of land to which the consent applies, such as the Severnside consents. I appreciate that there is no power to halt the existing construction of the mega-shed, much to the anger of my constituents affected by it, but that would provide a route to ensuring that all issues can be considered before permitting further development.

Furthermore, I ask the Minister to consider taking steps to prevent this issue in the future. If most consents are not implemented within three years, the consent lapses, thanks to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The problem arises where consents cover a large area, such as this one, and they are considered to have been implemented as soon as the first thing is built, resulting in the whole consent being live indefinitely. If this Government want to speed up development in the pursuit of growth, they could put time limits on the completion of the implementation, so that if the consent is not fully implemented within that period, the consent for the remaining parcels of land lapses or can have its conditions reviewed. If no such measure is introduced, and Governments continue to let developers hang around for 70 years with no incentive to finish implementing permissions and no modernisation of conditions, it makes a mockery of the Government’s plans for growth and their stated commitment to do so sustainably.

Let me highlight the particular concerns felt by residents and the parish council around flooding. I am meeting the Environment Agency tomorrow, and I would appreciate the Minister’s support for me to convene a meeting of the Environment Agency, the parish council and South Gloucestershire council to understand these concerns better and identify any action necessary to address them.

This is a complex matter, which I have tried to explain in the time allowed and without the use of supporting diagrams. I would be grateful for an opportunity to meet the Minister to discuss it in more depth and to see whether we can find a way to give hope to the residents of Pilning and the surrounding villages. Ultimately, they are the ones paying the price for a planning decision made years before many of them were even born.