Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Passengers push?

 

Just make a minor alteration to the carriage...

 

This is how ENPA Planning Officers carried out that exercise in 2025.
May-06-2025-Planning-Committee.pdf
Consultee representations are reported from pages 6 to 31. Public representations summarised (all 178 of them) on pages 32-38. Consideration of the Planning Policy Context of the development, and the Planning Considerations arising from it, is on pages 38 - 68.

The 'weighing up' exercise starts on page 68 (Section 14 - Planning Balance and Conclusion). The weighting does not reflect the number of supporters or number of objections at all. Just weighing up the things about the development which are in accordance with planning policies against those things which are not.

 

That would seem to imply two things:-

1. No weight is given to either (a) the proportion of support to object comments, nor (b) the (perceived) validity of any objections that are not about demonstrating something which is outwith planning policies
2. If there is nothing which is against any planning policies, then there is no valid reason to reject the application, so the view of objectors (and supporters also) are not taken into account and therefore are irrelevant.

I'm not sure if that is quite what is intended

 

@RailWest - read the report and draw your own conclusions. 25 pages are given to detailing the responses, usually by professionals, on behalf of statutory consultee organisations. Only 5 pages summarising the public comments.

That kind of weighting is what’s intended by the planning system. Local Plans are meant to help developers understand what kind of developments will be acceptable in an area and/or what kind of criteria they must satisfy. The present Gov wants to simplify this even more to further encourage development.

A consultation is not meant to be a referendum but committee Members can, as @35B says, give political weight to the ‘weight of public opinion’ if they wish. This can be very important in some cases however with the L&B the ENPA Members have tied their own hands to some degree by supporting, in principle, reinstatement of the railway in their own Local Plan - including criteria for a successful application.

If L&B’s application was compliant (I’ve no idea if it is) but Members rejected it in contravention of their own Local Plan this could be strong grounds for an appeal to the Secretary of State. The vast majority of planning appeals are decided (on behalf of the SoS) by professional Planning Inspectors, not politicians.

 

Reading all of this makes me wonder if let say, a behind-closed-doors meeting has not taken place at some time with the one question that needs to have been asked: what the hell have we got to do to get this passed?

The few construction and rebuilding projects that I have been involved with over my lifetime have always ended up with such a meeting between myself, the client, and the planning officer concerned. In the end, it comes down to reading the guidelines as to what is and is not allowed and understanding them.

One project almost never got off the ground due to the client's insistence on using a red/brown brick, yet the local brick colour was more of a yellow/stone colour, and the local planning officer would not let him build it with the red brick he wanted; in the end, they found a coloured brick that both sides could be happy with. Needless to say, the client didn't stay very long after completion and sold the house and moved on soon afterwards.

I have always found it useful to have the local planning authority on your side when you have these types of projects where things can and do go wrong, but let's not forget that this will only be the start of the long drawn-out process of rebuilding this part of the railway.

 

And in tomorrow’s episode of “Lynbarn states the bloody obvious”, we examine the issue of “rails - why there is no substitute for ensuring they are laid everywhere the trains need to go”.

Tom

 

@Jamessquared - to be fair to Colin, it seems to me the previous planning application failed because the L&B didn’t do exactly that.

I hope they’ve learned the lesson.

 

So do I; it was embarrassing to be told that the reason it failed was all down to the ENPA, when in reality it was the trustees who hadn't carried out due
process that was needed at the time.

Which might sound 'Bloody obvious' now, but as a result has made it much harder for all concerned. Not one of heritage railways' finest days.

I think the term having the right people in the right place at the right time comes to mind.

 

...and doing the right thing in the right way

 

I will do my best but it's s difficult to not get personal at this point where so few are trying to use opinions , personal thoughts and interpretation of things and are doing more harm than good on an open source website ( national preservation and Facebook)

Maybe out of respect for all those who have given so much of their time in doing what the L&B members asked them to do - extend to Parracombe Halt - I think we should stick to the facts as per the planning application and information on the L&B website and avoid at all costs making assumptions and personal interpretations not based on the facts that have been made public. As members, do we want to see railway extended or not? Of course we do, so let’s give this planning application our full support both by putting forward constructive feedback on the ENPA planning website and on here as this is still very much a social media platform and the general public can and do read everything on here . So let’s give our support to the hard working volunteers at the railway who give so much of their time.

Here’s a link to the L&B website for all the Facts and Figures currently avaliable

https://www.lynton-rail.co.uk/future-plans

 

I would not disagree with any of what you have said on a general basis.

However, on the matter of 'facts' and 'assumptions' it remains the case that there are a number of unanswered questions to which the answers appear not to be contained in either the planning application or associated detail on the L&BR website. As a 'member of the public' (as opposed to being a L&BRT member) I could - if I so wish - quite legitimately raise those issues when making comments on the planning portal, where they would be available for all to see. I see little difference therefore in discussing such issues here on NatPres, other than one might argue that the 'target audience' might be more receptive to the Trust.

 

Very long time lurker, first time poster. But I’ll bite.

So are you for or against?

 

I would agree with you about concentrating on the current plans, as they are a fresh breath of air, and I do support the application, but this is just the start of the whole process; something like this could take years to complete, and I am told that this is not going to be cheap or quick to do, there is still a lot of hard work to be done behind the scenes.

As I have said before, I have admiration by the bucket load for all the staff and Volunteers at Woody Bay and elsewhere along the line. They must feel like the rest of us, very disappointed at the lack of any major progress over the last twenty years or so. But I think from what I saw earlier this year, there is a chink of light now forming above Woody Bay and beyond.

I still wonder just how much of this railway will be rebuilt by September 2035.

 

Why does it matter Colin?

The worst thing the L&B could do is to put artificial deadlines on themselves.

Anniversaries can be celebrated with whatever length of track/rolling stock is available.

Trying to rush things will inevitably lead to mistakes.

 

You may be right on all counts Keith, but.... would it not be nicer to be able to mark 1935/2035 with some significant achievement (such as an extension to PE) ratherthan just 'more of the same'?
In fact I suspect that - based on current experiences across the L&BR as a whole - there is likely to be more to mark south of Blackmoor than there may be north of it

 

Yes of course it would be better to celebrate the closure anniversary with a longer run, but I think trying to force that through could lead to annoying the neighbours, annoying the ENPA, annoying the parish council or getting into a lot of debt. Perhaps even all 4.
You are probably correct about the southern section making more progress by 2035, but that just means there are 2 celebration galas. MW in the Yeo valley from Barnstaple?

 

I would be happy simply with them getting Planning Permission, at least that would be progress and no need to 'force' anything. After that it will all depend upon manpower, funds and - hopefully - little or nothing by way of crippling 'Grampian Conditions'.

 

As the man said from the Isle of Wight Railway, heritage railways are built on the dreams of their members, so I don't think it is a bad idea to have those aspirations; after all, it is those dreams which got this project off the ground in the first place.

I would think that if you asked all 2500 members what they would like to see by then, every one would have a different vision. As for me, I would be more than happy to see the heritage hub station and museum at Blackmoor opening that year with a line down to Wistlandpound and possibly all the way down to Bratton Fleming.

 

I dropped in and paid a first visit yesterday on our way back from holiday, so a few impressions.

Firstly, on the positive side - the setting of Woody Bay is divine, and the place oozes SR atmosphere.



The necessary additions that come with running a whole railway, rather than just preserving an intermediate station (i.e. carriage shed, loco shed, coaling stage etc) have been done in a fairly low-key way that doesn't detract from the overall scheme in terms of their size or prominence.

Secondly, the carriages are to die for:



Don't change those in the interests of modern amenities!

So the negatives: Firstly, I felt the place really needed a museum of smaller artefacts. The modern signage around the station did a good job of explaining some of the history and what made the railway special, but I feel it could have been enhanced had there been some display of artefacts connected with the line. (I appreciate that locating such a collection without further construction detracting from the setting may not be simple, even assuming such a collection could be gathered together).

However, really the big one - there is no disguising just how short the line is! That's not just duration (in yards or minutes); it is that there is no sense of journey. To keep the journey time reasonable, the loco barely seemed to get above walking pace, and I couldn't hear it working from a couple of carriages back even in the uphill direction (*). So you get in, the flag waves, you set off into some bucolic countryside with a good view of the sea - and almost immediately, just as you are settling in to the journey, you stop in somewhere that - with all due respect - is in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not advocating that the railway needs to be 20 miles long. But if you think of the best railways, there is a sense of a journey, that starts somewhere distinct, finishes somewhere different, and twists and turns through a changing landscape on the way. At the moment it feels like the L&BR lacks that; the feel is more of a heritage centre - a very good one, mind - with a demonstration line attached, not of a railway line that takes you on a journey.

The following information board was on display at both stations, which I think gives a good sense of the geography:



My sense is that a Woody Bay - Blackmoor Gate line (which would I think be about 4.5 miles long), with an intermediate halt at Parracombe, would give that sense of a proper "somewhere to somewhere journey". In that sense, the halt becomes important not because I suspect any more than a vanishingly small number would alight there, but because by virtue of the train stopping and then restarting, it gives a little sense of drama and enhances the feeling that you are on a journey, not just on a demonstration line.

(*) The contrast with the Launceston Steam Railway is noticeable, which is about three times the length and with the loco working hard in one direction.

Tom