Hallam Land wants up to 55 homes on 5.3 hectares off Burcott Lane, Bierton. Comments close on 7 October and officers, not councillors, are expected to decide.
An outline application for up to 55 homes on 5.3 hectares of farmland off Burcott Lane in Bierton went live on Buckinghamshire Council’s planning register last week. The register dates the statutory press advertisement today, 16 September.
Comments close on Wednesday 7 October. As of this morning the register recorded no comments at all on the application. (Buckinghamshire Council planning register, PL/26/07248/OA)
The applicant is Hallam Land. The site sits just under two miles north-east of Aylesbury town centre, bounded to the east by Burcott Lane, with the Kingsbrook estate to the south and west. A public right of way, BWB/5/1, crosses it, and two 33kV overhead power lines run across it east to west.
One point of confusion is worth clearing up before anyone goes looking for it. Hallam Land titles every document “Land at Burcott Lane, Kingsbrook”. The council files the application under the parish of Bierton, and the register calls the site “Land West Of Burcott Lane Bierton”. The neighbourhood plan draws no development boundary for Kingsbrook at all, because Kingsbrook is a strategic allocation dealt with by the wider local plan.
What is being applied for
Only the vehicle access is up for decision now. Scale, appearance, layout and landscaping would all come back later as reserved matters. The scheme as submitted would deliver:
- up to 55 homes, at a net density of up to 33 dwellings per hectare
- 25% affordable housing, to be secured by a section 106 agreement
- built form in the southern part of the site, with public open space and drainage basins to the north
- a new priority T junction on Burcott Lane, with a 5.75m carriageway, 2m footways on both sides and a 3m shared pedestrian and cycle path inside the site
(Planning Statement, Nexus Planning for Hallam Land, September 2026)
The planning fee paid was £21,928. Thirty documents were submitted with the application, including a transport assessment, a flood risk and drainage strategy, a heritage statement and a landscape and visual impact assessment.
The site is outside the village’s own boundary
Bierton has a neighbourhood plan. Residents voted for it at referendum on 17 July 2025 and Buckinghamshire Council made it on 10 September 2025, which means it is part of the legal development plan for the village. (Bierton Neighbourhood Plan 2025 to 2033, made version)
Policy P1 of that plan draws development boundaries around Bierton village, Burcott, Broughton Crossing and Oldhams Meadow. The Burcott Lane site is outside them, and the applicant says so in its own planning statement: “The Application Site is located outside of the Development Boundaries defined within the Bierton Neighbourhood Plan.”
The applicant’s case is that the plan’s protection does not bite, for two reasons. First, that its Policy HO2 simply routes development outside the boundaries back to the wider Vale of Aylesbury Local Plan, and the scheme complies with that. Second, that the neighbourhood plan “does not contain any policies and allocations to meet its identified housing requirement”, so the enhanced status national policy gives to neighbourhood plans is not engaged.
The plan’s authors anticipated the first point and answered it. The Bierton plan’s own supporting text reads:
“VALP Policy D3 makes it clear that where a settlement boundary exists from a made NP, any new proposal for an unallocated site should be entirely within the boundary.”
The plan is also explicit about why it allocates nothing. Bierton was given no additional housing in the Vale of Aylesbury Local Plan because of the scale of Kingsbrook next door, which will eventually reach 2,450 homes, two primary schools, a secondary school, a local centre and employment land. The plan records that 86% of survey respondents did not believe any further housing development was needed in the neighbourhood area, and that the least popular option, backed by 15%, was “sites with five or more houses”.
What residents said before it was submitted
Hallam Land ran its own pre-application consultation and has published the results. It received 72 responses: 25 questionnaires, 41 comments and six sets of questions. (Statement of Community Involvement, September 2026)
The themes the applicant’s own consultants counted in the general comments are set out below. One of them was support for the scheme.
In the questionnaire section, traffic was the most common concern (14 responses), followed by a lack of infrastructure such as schools and doctors (nine) and unacceptable access (seven).
One thing did change. The consultation statement records that “the quantum of development has also reduced from 60 to 55 dwellings since the public consultation”.
The pre-application advice never arrived
Hallam Land asked Buckinghamshire Council for pre-application advice on 28 August 2025. A meeting with the case officer followed on 27 November 2025.
The applicant’s statement, dated 7 September 2026, says: “As of 7th September 2026, no formal written advice has been issued by the Council. The Applicant has chased for the written response on a frequent basis.” The application went in without that written answer, more than a year after it was asked for.
Officers, not councillors, are expected to decide
The register lists the expected decision level for this application as a delegated decision, meaning an officer signs it off rather than a committee of elected members. The determination deadline is 8 December 2026.
That date falls after 31 October, when councillors and parish councils across England lose the right to call a planning application in to committee at all. The change is compelled by national regulations, and Buckinghamshire’s constitution has been rewritten to match: “There is no right for a member or parish/town council to request, or require, the calling-in of an application to committee.” We reported that in full on 12 September: Aylesbury planning: councillor call-in ends on 31 October.
The council’s own numbers explain why applications like this one keep coming. Buckinghamshire can demonstrate only a 3.73-year supply of deliverable housing sites in its North and Central area, against the five years national policy requires. (North and Central Area Five Year Housing Land Supply Position Statement, March 2026)
Hallam Land’s statement runs its own version of that calculation and arrives at 3.69 years and a shortfall of 2,074 homes.
What it means for you
If you want to comment, you have until Wednesday 7 October 2026. Comments go through the application page on the council’s planning register, quoting reference PL/26/07248/OA.
Two practical points if you do.
Responses to the developer’s own consultation do not count. The 72 responses Hallam Land gathered were collected before the application existed. Nothing said then is on the council’s file as a representation.
Planning matters carry weight; other objections do not. Highways and access, drainage and flood risk, landscape and countryside impact, heritage, infrastructure capacity and conflict with the development plan are all material. The applicant’s own planning statement records that the site’s northern field contains land in Flood Zones 2 and 3 along with surface water flooding, that a further small area in the south is at risk of surface water flooding, and that the southern edge of the site lies within the Chiltern Beechwoods Special Area of Conservation zone of influence.
The other Bierton scheme is at a later stage. Councillors backed up to 36 homes off Barnett Way on 9 September, and that one is now with a council director: Bierton 36 homes backed, with a fresh objection window.
More local applications each week on our Aylesbury planning news page.
Have your say