An inspector has been appointed and a hearing date set for the appeal against a decision to refuse plans for 40 homes on land near Falmouth.

Persimmon Homes had applied to build 40 homes and infrastructure on land off Bickland Hill near Budock.

The application was refused by Cornwall Council's planning committee in March despite being recommended for approval by the planning officer.

The informal hearing will start at 10am on September 28 in Tremough Innovation Centre, Tremough Campus, Penryn.

Under the proposal 14 out the 40 new homes would have be affordable.

When the original application was turned down at a planning committee meeting, members of that committee said they would have been minded to approve the application if the percentage of affordable homes had been 100%.

In its original report to the committee, the officer stated that the site is “not allocated for development and would result in the loss of a greenfield site”.

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They stated that while it would go against the local Neighbourhood Development Plan (Budock parish) but the development did comply with the Cornwall Local Plan as it is considered to be “rounding off” as the site has other developments around it.

That was disputed by Budock parish who said firstly that the NDP was part of the Cornwall local plan having been ratified by a referendum of parishioners and they considered the development to be an encroachment, not infill or rounding off.

In particular the parish council was concerned that the development would result in the loss of greenfield between Falmouth and Budock.