Six Gypsy and Traveller pitches at Kingshill Road and Walters Ash go to committee on 23 September. Officers back both, against a 671-name petition.
Council officers are recommending approval of two Gypsy and Traveller sites in the Green Belt on Wednesday night, both of them partly built already. Together they would create six pitches. Both sit inside the Metropolitan Green Belt and the Chilterns National Landscape.
Both go to the West Buckinghamshire Area Planning Committee at 6.30pm on Wednesday 23 September, in the council chamber at Queen Victoria Road, High Wycombe. Councillors called both in.
Both reports are on the council’s own agenda, and both are decided under the 2026 National Planning Policy Framework, which rewrote the Green Belt rules. The arithmetic inside them is the part nobody has published.
The two sites
Ladys Mile, Kingshill Road, High Wycombe (25/05307/FUL) would become a caravan site for four pitches, holding four static and four touring caravans, on land changed from agricultural use. The hardstanding and an earth screening bund are already there, so the application is part retrospective. It is in Hughenden parish and the Ridgeway East ward.
The Hedgerow, Parkwood, Walters Ash (PL/25/4361/FA) would become a private site for two pitches, each with a day room and parking, plus retention of existing hardstanding and a caravan. It is also part retrospective. Walters Ash is about four miles north west of High Wycombe, in Bradenham parish and the Ridgeway West ward.
Officers recommend permission for both, subject to conditions.
The number that decides it
Both reports turn on the same finding: Buckinghamshire has nowhere near enough Traveller pitches, and cannot show a five-year supply of them.
The Hedgerow report sets the sums out in full, from the council’s Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessment published in 2025:
- 681 pitches are needed across Buckinghamshire between 2025 and 2045.
- 450 of those are needed by 2029.
- 23 pitches have been permitted recently, all of them in the Vale of Aylesbury.
- That leaves an unmet need of 427 pitches.
- The Vale of Aylesbury plan allocates 10 more, but neither site is expected to be deliverable within five years, so they do not count.
- There are no other Local Plan allocations for Traveller pitches anywhere else in Buckinghamshire.
The emerging Buckinghamshire Local Plan proposes 280 pitches in its first ten years, which would still leave 212 unmet. Officers say that plan is at too early a stage to carry much weight.
The two applications before committee on Wednesday would supply six pitches against that 427.
Under the 2026 Framework, a shortfall of that size does real work. Policy S5 says development meeting an unmet need for Traveller sites outside a settlement boundary “should be approved, unless the benefits of doing so would be substantially outweighed by any adverse effects”. The Ladys Mile report concludes the shortfall “carries substantial weight in favour of permitting the development”.
Why the Green Belt does not stop them
This is the part that has changed. Under the old rules a Traveller site in the Green Belt was inappropriate development, and needed very special circumstances. The 2026 Framework sets out categories in policy GB7 that are not inappropriate, and both reports place these sites in category GB7(g), which covers grey belt.
Grey belt is Green Belt land that does not strongly contribute to three of the five Green Belt purposes: checking sprawl, preventing towns merging, and preserving the setting of historic towns.
At Walters Ash, officers say the site makes no notable contribution to any of the three, so it is grey belt.
At Kingshill Road the reasoning is harder, and the report does not hide it. The council’s own draft Buckinghamshire Green Belt Assessment (2026), prepared by AECOM, puts the site in Assessment Area HW007 and concludes that HW007 makes a strong contribution to checking the unrestricted sprawl of High Wycombe. Officers depart from that. They argue the conclusion applies to the wider assessment area, not to this field. The site itself is hemmed in by Kingshill Road, woodland, a day nursery and an agricultural unit, and on that reading makes only a moderate contribution. That is what allows it to qualify as grey belt.
The report also notes the assessment is a draft, has not been adopted, and carries limited weight.
The objections
At Kingshill Road, officers record objections from residents and a petition, “Halt the Proposed Gypsy Traveller Site at Lady’s Mile, High Wycombe”, with 671 signatures at the time the report was written. Objectors raised:
- the Green Belt and the Chilterns National Landscape
- the loss of agricultural land
- the setting of the Four Ashes Conservation Area
- drainage, biodiversity and highway safety
- the retrospective nature of the works
- the cumulative effect alongside the Terriers Farm scheme next door, where 370 homes were approved in June 2026
Three councillors called it in: Cllr Tony Green, Cllr Chris Chilton and Cllr Catherine Oliver. Hughenden Parish Council had made no comment when the report was written.
Officers dismiss several strands directly. Concerns about “safety, community cohesion, social integration, and the future behaviour of potential occupiers” are not material planning considerations and can carry no weight. Nor can effects on property values. Nor, on its own, can the fact that work was done before permission was sought, because section 73A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allows retrospective applications. A Planning Contravention Notice has been served over the hardstanding and bunding; no enforcement notice has been issued.
At Walters Ash, Bradenham Parish Council has objected formally and in detail. Its central point is history. The Secretary of State and a planning inspector considered this same site in 2011 and 2014, refused a permanent Traveller site, and granted only a short temporary personal permission. The inspector found the development caused “significant harm to the landscape quality and scenic beauty” and would “seriously erode the openness of the Green Belt”.
The parish council also rejects the grey belt claim outright. Land inside a National Landscape cannot be treated as marginal or degraded, it argues, and the guidance excludes land where policies for areas of particular importance apply. It lists nearby heritage the application documents omit, including the Grim’s Ditch archaeological notification area running directly north of the site.
Cllr Carington and Cllr Adoh both called the application in.
Officers answer the history point by saying the site has changed since the appeal:
- the screening around it has grown
- the stables were permitted in the meantime
- new tree and hedge planting is proposed, and would be locked in for 30 years through a Biodiversity Gain Plan
Their conclusion is that the visual impact “is not judged to be so severe as to form a strong reason for refusal”.
What it means for you
If you live near either site, Wednesday is the decision. Committee members are not bound by the recommendation and can refuse against it, though they have to give planning reasons.
- To speak at the meeting, contact the planning team at SSC.registration@buckinghamshire.gov.uk. Registration closes before the meeting, so do it now rather than on the day.
- To watch, the meeting is webcast from the council’s website, and the public gallery at Queen Victoria Road is open. The meeting starts at 6.30pm and these are items 4 and 7 of nine.
- The petition and the objections are already before members. Comments submitted now are unlikely to reach the report, though late representations are usually reported verbally.
- If either is approved, occupation would be restricted by condition to people meeting the planning definition of Gypsies and Travellers, and the Kingshill Road site would be capped at four pitches with no more than two caravans on each.
We track decisions on this committee in High Wycombe planning news.
Also before the committee on Wednesday
Two other local applications are on the same agenda:
- OS Parcel 3623, Thame Road, Longwick (25/06402/OUT), outline permission for up to 40 homes, recommended for approval despite objections from the parish council, both ward councillors and the MP. Full detail in our Longwick story.
- Grymsdyke Farm, Main Road, Lacey Green (PL/25/3044/FA), change of use of former agricultural barns from car valeting to light industrial use, recommended for approval. It was called in over heavy vehicle traffic and the site’s proximity to a nursery.
Sources
- West Buckinghamshire Area Planning Committee agenda, Wednesday 23 September 2026, Buckinghamshire Council, for the agenda, the venue, the running order and the public speaking contact.
- Officer report on 25/05307/FUL, Ladys Mile, Kingshill Road, High Wycombe, agenda item 4, for the proposal, the Green Belt assessment against Assessment Area HW007, the recommendation, the planning conditions, the Planning Contravention Notice, the 671-signature petition and the summarised objections.
- Officer report on PL/25/4361/FA, The Hedgerow, Parkwood, Walters Ash, agenda item 7, for the two-pitch proposal, the grey belt conclusion, the pitch supply arithmetic, the 2014 appeal findings and Bradenham Parish Council’s objection in full.
- Both reports are published within the agenda reports pack for the meeting.
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