The proposed site would have a prominent visual impact on the route into Dunstable from the A5, and we feel would be an unacceptable industrial scar against an otherwise dramatic landscape with the Chalk Hill escarpment that forms a backdrop to the area.

The plans involve Green Belt land, which though scheduled for release from the Green Belt under CBC’s Development Strategy has not yet been so, as the DS is currently suspended. In these circumstances, the NPPF requires that ‘very special circumstances’  have to be established to justify the harm involved to the GB’s essential ‘openness’. We do not consider that the Council has put forward a sufficient case given the degree of harm that this proposal entails, and that consequently the application is premature.