Cornwall Council approves 33-home Bridge View Nurseries scheme in Calstock

In 2018, Cornwall Council, the local planning authority, granted planning permission for a housing development on the former Bridge View Nurseries site in Calstock, a village on the River Tamar in Cornwall, south-west England.

The scheme provided for 33 homes, a mix that included affordable housing, meaning homes for sale or rent below market prices for local people. Planning officers treated the site as a natural extension of the village edge, and the approval was seen as a way to add much-needed housing in a rural area where homes are often expensive.

The developer, Construction Partners, was to build the estate. Approval was not the end of the process, though. Conditions attached to the permission and legal agreements covering the affordable homes still had to be settled before completed houses could be sold.

Those later steps became the centre of a long dispute between the developer and the council. The estate was eventually built but left empty, which is why the approval is now cited as the starting point of the story.