Fleetwood businessman hits out at delays in his housing scheme at Wyre

A Fleetwood businessman has voiced frustration with the planning system at Wyre Council as 18 new houses he has built in the town are still unoccupied.

Sunny Deol was granted planning permission in December 2021 to build the homes on the site of the derelict former Fleetwood Health Centre more than three years ago, with the houses fronting onto London Street and Preston Street.

However, despite building the homes, the developer says he cannot rent them out via a housing provider because of a seven month delay on a planning condition being signed off.

And he says it is not the first time he has had wrangles with the council over a planning application. Mr Deol says be bought Prospect Farm on Skipool Road in Thornton which had already had planning permission for nine houses to be built there, which was the main reason for him purchasing the property.

However, he says he was later told by Wyre that the planning permission for the nine new homes had been granted by mistake and he couldn’t build the new homes after all. He says he was told that the site had also been added to the brownfield register, for land that could be built on, in error.

The amended application for four new detached homes later went through Wyre’s planning committee in 2021 where it was finally granted – despite being recommended for refusal by the planning officer.

Despite Mr Deol’s complaints, Wyre Council says the applications were dealt with in a professional manner and that the applicant brought about a number of changes which had an impact on the time taken to deal with the issues.

What he says

Mr Deol said: “This has now happened to me on two occasions, going through the same planning office. “The delays and mistakes are just not acceptable and if it was a private company you would think about taking action against them – but as a statutory authority we just have to put up with it.

“In the case of the Fleetwood site, there are homes lying empty when there are people who need them.” Mr Deol said the experience had led him to consider taking the Fleetwood matter to appeal for ‘non-determination’ and even led him to question whether he was being singled out for being Asian.

“I don’t want to think that was the reason but it made me start to think that way.” Mr Deol needed to satisfy Wyre Council over a number of planning conditions, including one about the type of flooring used for the new Fleetwood homes and a separate list of conditions including one relating to the possibility of contamination from PFAS, a fire retardant foam from the days when the site was formerly used as a fire station. PFAS has since been linked to cancer.

Mr Deol said he had taken the required steps over the conditions, including demonstrating that PFAS was not present on the site, and he had been waiting for some of them to be signed off since June last year.

But he says he was told the environmental health officer who would look at the matter was on long term leave and there was no one qualified at Wyre to provide cover for his role, leading to the delays.

The council response

A Wyre Council spokesman said: “The council have dealt with the applications in a consistent, professional and expedient way throughout the whole process.

“The applicant has made several changes throughout the process, which can take a considerable amount of time for the Council to determine, in accordance with regulations.”