Girls School need courses for horses – Walsingham Planning gains 20 permissions to expand the school facilities, especially for equestrian use.

Walsingham Planning has acted on behalf of Howells School (an independent girls school) in Denbigh, North Wales for over 12 years.

The school was almost forced into administration in 1997, but Walsingham Planning were brought in by the new owners to work on an ambitious development programme, involving substantial investment, to address falling boarding numbers and improve the sporting facilities, teaching and residential accommodation at this prestigious establishment, including facilities to enable the girls to bring their horses to school with them.

The main school building is a Grade II listed building situated in a large estate extending to 14 hectares. The estate is located on the edge of the market town of Denbigh, lying partly within open countryside at the foot of Denbigh Castle. The location of the site adjacent to this national monument and outside the normal development limits led to some interesting planning issues, as part of the estate is farmed by a tenant farmer and crossed by a number of public footpaths and bridleways.

To date, Walsingham Planning has secured more than twenty planning permissions and listed building consents for the school and won an appeal, with a full award of costs against the local authority. Permissions have included an indoor tennis centre; relocation of the hockey pitch; erection of a stable block and manege; extensions to three boarding houses; alterations and extensions to form a new prep school; re-location of the sports pavilion; extension of a physio-lab/cv gymnasium; erection of two substantial dwellings for the Principal and visiting dignitaries; and construction of an underground caving centre.

In securing these permissions, Walsingham Planning successfully promoted the needs and aims of the school over the concerns of the agricultural tenant and local residents who walk or ride their horses across the footpaths and bridleways which form part of the school’s land and did not wish to see any development at the school.