Our position on the proposed Orchard Farm development

Update 30 January 2025

We are dismayed to hear that permission has been granted for the Orchard Farm development of 300 houses adjacent to Tiddesley Wood nature reserve, near Pershore.

Worcestershire Wildlife Trust has long campaigned to make sure that this development did not proceed. Having managed Tiddesley Wood for nearly 40 years, it’s our experience that increased recreational pressure already has a harmful effect. This will only get worse when the new development is built. We attended the recent Public Inquiry into the planning application in order to make this plain to the Planning Inspector. Sadly, the Planning Inspector was persuaded by evidence from the developer rather than Wychavon District Council’s defence of the wood, which we fully supported.

Tiddesley Wood is one of the most important woodlands in Worcestershire. Permitting harmful development here risks undermining environmental legislation and protections, setting a dangerous precedent for other nationally protected sites.

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world – we are in the middle of a biodiversity crisis and are losing wildlife at an unprecedented rate. A key planning principle is to avoid harm to wildlife first before moving to reduce the harm resulting from development. The emerging South Worcestershire Development Plan sets out where development should be in the south of the county. The Orchard Farm site had been removed from it because of the potential harm it would inflict on the neighbouring Tiddesley Wood nature reserve.

Against our advice, the Planning Inspector here has deemed it possible to mitigate the harm caused by this development. Throughout the process we have made it clear that such an approach is unlikely to be successful. The process required the Trust to engage with the developer to discuss options to mitigate harm should permission be granted. Though there are elements in the mitigation proposed by the developer that we accept will help to limit some of the harm, it remains our position that these will not be wholly effective in preventing damage to the wood and its wildlife.

Wildlife is ultimately paying the price of this development.

Thank you to everyone who agreed with us and stood up to protect Tiddesley Wood nature reserve through this process. We know you will share our disappointment and frustration with the outcome. Thank you to those who contacted us to express their support and particularly to those who donated to help us make our case, helping with the costs of specialist ecological surveys, legal advice and evidence gathering. Despite this decision, our work to protect wildlife right across the county, through the planning process and elsewhere, goes on. This only strengthens our resolve.

The love for Tiddesley Wood demonstrated by local people underlines just how important the woodland and its wildlife are. Looking to the future, we need all visitors to the wood to play their part and redouble their efforts to help protect its wildlife. This includes sticking to the designated trails, keeping dogs on leads and calling out anti-social activities where they occur. The wildlife of Tiddesley Wood needs us now more than ever.

Background

This follows on from years of work on the South Worcestershire Development Plan Review (SWDPR) during which we, along with other stakeholders including Natural England and local people, sought to safeguard the wood through the Local Plan process. Our comments and the voices of many others provided the evidence needed for the councils to remove the allocation (for development) of Orchard Farm from the emerging Plan, a move that we consider to be essential if we are to protect the adjacent wood and its wildlife and one that we fully supported.

The Government has repeatedly made clear that development must be plan-led, in other words guided by local plan policy. The local councils and their emerging Local Plan do not support development here and so it should not be allowed to happen.

Perhaps more importantly, this battle is not just about one SSSI. The protection of precious places like Tiddesley Wood is essential. If we are to meet the Government’s stated commitment to protect 30% of the UK’s land by 2030, and assist with nature’s recovery, we must protect the best remaining fragments of our natural heritage, reducing pressure on them and seeking to expand and join them up. This is a well understood ecological principle known as ‘more, bigger, better and joined up’ that was set out in the Government-sponsored review ‘Making space for nature’: a review of England's wildlife sites.

Our concerns

The Trust’s concerns fall into three main categories.

There are several technical shortcomings in the documents presented by the applicants. We believe that they underplay the harm likely to be caused by the proposed development while overestimating the effectiveness of their mitigation.
We do not accept that the proposed mitigation will offset the harm caused by increased recreational pressure in Tiddesley Wood SSSI. While we welcome visitors to our nature reserve, we are already seeing the adverse impacts of excessive recreational pressure. Paths are widened by trampling, new and unauthorised paths are destroying valuable habitat, dog fouling and dogs off leads are impacting wildlife and the nature reserve also suffers from anti-social behaviour. Essentially, we believe that the reserve is now at capacity for the number of visitors it can absorb.
We do not agree that their proposed ‘buffer’ planting alongside the woodland will be a meaningful addition to Tiddesley Wood SSSI. It will take many years to mature and will always be affected by noise, light and domestic pets.

It is likely that the additional harm will be incremental and continuous whereas any mitigation put forward by the applicants will essentially be set-in-stone when Wychavon District Council make their decision. If, as is very likely, the SSSI habitats do decline following development, despite the applicant’s proposed mitigation, our capacity to undo that harm will be severely limited and the wildlife in the SSSI will diminish accordingly.

As we have made clear many times before, we do not believe that the harmful effects of building so close to the wood could ever be effectively mitigated in line with legal and planning policy requirements. With that in mind we are once again restating our very strong objection to proposed development of this site.

Our formal responses can be found at the bottom of the page.

Taken together, these issues mean that we do not believe that the application can demonstrate legal and policy compliance. The law suggests that any planning permission here would need to demonstrate that the SSSI would be protected and enhanced. We do not believe that that could ever be the case. Planning policy also requires effective mitigation of wildlife harm and again, we do not think that can be achieved here.

The bigger picture

Although the development may also have detrimental impacts on the Trust as owners of the wood, our position is based on our concerns about the adverse ecological impacts on a SSSI. It follows the same guiding principles that we use in all our planning comments across the county and will continue to do so as this case evolves.

We will continue to object to this proposal and we hope that the strength of argument against development here will lead to a refusal of the planning application.

You can find out more about how to respond to planning applications in our helpful Planning for Biodiversity guide.

Update 27th September 2024

The planning application for Orchard Farm, adjacent to Tiddesley Wood nature reserve, has gone to appeal. The planning decision will now be made by a Government Planning Inspector through a Public Inquiry beginning on 5th November 2024. Steve Bloomfield, a senior conservation officer at the Trust, will be attending on behalf of WWT. Further details will be made public when appropriate as part of the formal Inquiry process.

To find out more about the application, visit Wychavon District Council's planning portal and search on the 'appeals' tab.

We’d like to thank everyone who sent a response to the planning application for 300 houses in 2023. Making meaningful comments on planning applications is an important part of standing up for Worcestershire’s wildlife and so we were pleased to see many comments about the nature reserve and wildlife impacts among the public response.

Tiddesley Wood is an ancient woodland of such high value for wildlife that it is designated as a nationally important Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). It is also one of the Trust’s most cherished nature reserves. We are, therefore, extremely worried that there is yet another proposal to build on the adjacent land.

The applicants have tried to demonstrate that their proposals will safeguard the wood and that any harm caused by 300 new houses, can be avoided or effectively mitigated. We simply do not believe them.