Strategic Planning Committee has refused the giant warehouse scheme at Furtho Pit. That’s round one won.

Round two starts now — and it’s quieter, and it matters just as much.

West Northamptonshire Council is writing its new Local Plan (Regulation 19, due in September). The current draft still marks Furtho Pit down for “strategic logistics” — a fancy way of saying: come back with a bigger shed, and we’ll wave it through.

From 1 October the rules change as to what may or may not go to Planning Committee, officers will hold a veto as to whether or not there will be democratic input. I cannot guarantee that any subsequent applications would be put in front of councillors.

Here’s the case for taking it off the map entirely:

• It’s already been refused, for good reasons. Loss of protected wildlife habitat, harm to neighbouring homes, and no funding secured for the roads, training or nature it would have needed.
• We don’t even need it. The Council’s own figures show it makes up barely 3% of the logistics land in the whole plan. There are far better, motorway-adjacent sites that can do the job instead.
• It’s in the wrong place. The Council’s own evidence from South East Midlands Local Area Partnership (SEMLEP) says warehouse sites should be a few miles from a motorway junction. Furtho Pit is 10-12 miles away.
• The site was never meant for this. It was allocated years ago for small, local business units — not a mega-shed four and a half times the size the Council’s own advice document define as “large.” The plan is being quietly rewritten to fit the application, instead of the other way round.
• New evidence has come in. Part of the site has since been officially confirmed as a protected wildlife site — evidence the Council didn’t have when it first drew up the plan from 2016 to 2020.

WHEN THE FACTS CHANGE – YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND

What we’re asking for: that Furtho Pit is removed from the new Local Plan, not just refused this one time.

What you can do: write to WNC’s Planning Policy team before September and say so, in your own words. It doesn’t need to be long or technical — a few sentences saying you live locally, you support the refusal, and you want the site removed from the Regulation 19 Plan is enough. The more people who write in, the harder this is to ignore.

Send your letter or email to:

Richard Wood, Planning Policy, West Northamptonshire Council One Angel Square, Angel Street, Northampton, NN1 1ED

email: PlanningPolicy@WestNorthants.gov.uk

Let’s finish the job

I have sent my submission on this full text below: –

3 July 2026

Dear Richard,

West Northamptonshire Local Plan (Regulation 19) — Removal of Policy EC8 (Former Furtho Pit)

I am writing ahead of the Regulation 19 Local Plan, due in September, to request that Policy EC8 (Former Furtho Pit) is removed from the Plan. This follows my Regulation 18 representation of 24 March 2026, in which I raised the same objection, and the subsequent refusal of the associated planning application (WNS/2022/1741/EIA) at Strategic Planning Committee.

1. The planning application has been refused

Strategic Planning Committee refused the associated application (WNS/2022/1741/EIA, decision dated 2 July 2026) for 9no. employment units totalling 69,744 sq.m.

The reasons for refusal were:

• loss of the designated Furtho Pit Local Wildlife Site and Open Mosaic Habitat on Previously Developed Land, contrary to Policies S10 and BN2 of the Joint Core Strategy and AL5(g), NE5, NE6, BN2 and SS2(m)&(p) of the South Northamptonshire Local Plan;
• unacceptable visual harm to properties on Stratford Road from the siting, scale and height of Units 5 to 8;
• the absence of a S106 obligation to secure sustainable transport, employment training, landscape maintenance and biodiversity net gain.

These reasons go to the fundamental suitability of the site for large-scale employment development, not to a remediable scheme defect, and are directly relevant to whether EC8 should be carried forward into the Regulation 19 Plan.

2. The strategic land shortfall does not justify EC8

Total allocated logistics/commercial land in the Regulation 18 Plan, including committed sites, is 394.76 hectares — against an identified need of 484 to 601 hectares in the HENA. This is a shortfall of 89 to 207 hectares.

This makes site quality, not just quantity, the decisive issue. EC8 delivers only 10.56 hectares toward that shortfall — a small contribution that can be met more sustainably elsewhere.

Policies EC10, EC11 and EC13, adjacent to Junctions 15, 15A and 16 of the M1, offer direct access to the strategic road network and are demonstrably superior in sustainability, transport efficiency and deliverability.

Directing the shortfall toward motorway-adjacent sites, rather than a poorly-connected rural site with confirmed ecological constraints, is the more soundly evidenced approach.

3. EC8 fails the Council’s own strategic site criteria

This is reinforced by the Council’s own evidence base. The 2022 SEMLEP Warehousing and Logistics Study sets out the site selection criteria for strategic distribution, requiring good connections to the motorway network, ideally within 3km and up to 5km of a junction. EC8 lies approximately 10-12 miles by road from the nearest M1 junctions (J14 and J15), over double the maximum threshold.

EC8 fails the Council’s own strategic site criteria and is fundamentally unsuited to strategic logistics use.

4. EC8 fits emerging policy to the application, not the other way round

EC8 goes beyond anything AL5 (adopted Local Plan Part 2) ever intended. AL5 allocated 16 hectares for mixed employment.

It did not set an explicit floorspace cap, but its supporting text and the Council’s own 2022 SPD repeatedly and consistently direct the site toward small and medium units, benchmarked against Wolverton Mill (220-7,150 sq.m).

The draft WNLP now splits the same 16 hectares into 10.5 hectares strategic logistics and 5.5 hectares commercial, a split with no basis in AL5, and one that conveniently permits a strategic-scale unit of circa 33,000 sq.m.

This is not policy responding to evidence, it is the emerging Regulation 19 Plan being shaped retrospectively to fit an application already in for determination on this site. 

Using a draft allocation to legitimise a scheme that the adopted policy was never written to accommodate weakens the adopted plan and sets a troubling precedent for how emerging policy is used.

This is borne out by the refused scheme: Unit 1 alone was 36,287 sq.m, over four and a half times the SPD’s own 8,000 sq.m large-unit benchmark, and 52% of the entire 69,744 sq.m development. The remaining 8 units averaged 4,161 sq.m, consistent with AL5’s original small/medium intent. “9 employment units” was one large strategic shed with 8 smaller units wrapped around it to fit the description of mixed employment.

The strategic need is not made out at this site. The evidence relied on, the 2022 SEMLEP Warehousing and Logistics Study, records warehousing employment growth to 2020 only, with no updated sector-specific study since. The 2025 HENA fills the gap with general Transport and Storage sector data, not a site-specific case for Furtho Pit. There is no evidence trail justifying why this site, allocated for small and medium units for over a decade, should now carry strategic-scale development.

The allocation should be removed. If retained, it must be restricted to the small and medium unit sizes AL5 and the SPD always intended.

5. New material consideration: wildlife site designation

The local wildlife site designation covering part of the Furtho Pit site was formally confirmed in February 2026. This post-dates the Regulation 18 launch (Jan 26) and constitutes a new material consideration that was not before the Council when EC8 was drafted.

It reinforces the ecological evidence in my earlier representation — including the confirmed presence of Open Mosaic Habitat on Previously Developed Land and a county-significant invertebrate assemblage — and further undermines the case for retaining EC8 as an employment allocation.

6. Requested action

I ask that Policy EC8 (Former Furtho Pit) is removed from the Regulation 19 Local Plan, on the combined grounds of:

• the recent refusal of planning permission on the site;
• the shortfall (not surplus) of strategic logistics land, which is better met at motorway-adjacent sites; EC8’s failure to meet the Council’s own SEMLEP distance criteria;
• its reversal of the settled small/medium-unit purpose of AL5 and the 2022 SPD;
• the wildlife site designation confirmed after Regulation 18, which is a material consideration the Council must now take into account.

If EC8 is retained, it must at minimum be restricted to the small and medium unit sizes AL5 and the SPD always intended.

I would be grateful for confirmation that this will be addressed by the Planning Policy Committee prior to publication of the Regulation 19 Plan, and for sight of how this is reflected in the schedule of main modifications.

Yours sincerely,

Ian