Planning - Statutory Consultation with the Gardens Trust
The Gardens Trust are an exemplary national charity with regional branches - our local branch is the Avon and Gloucestershire Gardens Trust. Currently they are classified as a “statutory consultee” for planning applications affecting Registered Parks and Gardens. The Gardens Trust can also be engaged with before planning applications are submitted by an applicant or by members of the public. The planning authorities (in our case the Cotswold District Council) are currently obliged to consider the views of the Gardens Trust in considering any such application. For context in 2024 the Gardens Trust objected to 6% of planning applications referred to them, so they are not a huge hurdle but rather offer sage advice.
The Gardens Trust made and strong clear objection to the recent planning application affecting the Grade II listed Registered Park and Garden on the Sherborne Brook, after the application was forwarded to them by the planning authority. We don’t know if this was the reason that the NT withdrew their application but it's a reasonable assumption to believe that it was at least in part due to this objection from a statutory consultee. It’s possible a lot of time and money could have been saved had the applicants engaged earlier.
The government are currently reviewing the national planning system and one of the proposals being explored is the removal of the Gardens Trust as a statutory consultee, to enable , in their words a “pro-growth, pro-infrastructure planning system”.
For context the Gardens Trust cost the taxpayer about £43k a year - a tiny amount for the significant and important service they provide.
The government review is requesting input from all sorts of organisations and individuals by 13 January 2026. You can read about the Gardens Trust views on this here. They invite others including community groups, councils and individuals to also make their views about these reforms known through the government’s portal here.
I’m delighted to see that the National Trust themselves support the retention of the Gardens Trust as a statutory consultee, which is pleasing too and perhaps indicates that nationally they do value the input of the Gardens Trust when considering planning applications
I too have made a strong statement supporting the continuing role of the Garden’s Trust and I would politely suggest that you too can express your views through the portal linked above. It’ll take you 5 minutes and needs to be done before 13 January. I made an additional point, as follows:
Nationally Registered Park and Gardens were defined decades ago by Historic England with a boundary for the purposes of grant applications. This hurried and dated delineation is now being used to define areas of statutory planning consultation, an entirely different purpose. There is a clear case for the expansion of areas for statutory consultation where the surrounding area provides context for parklands. I suggest that applies, as an example, here in Sherborne, where the formally recognised parklands don’t quite match the areas enclosed as parks by Crump Dutton in the 1620s, or later Duttons.
But the main concerns is that removal of the Statutory Consultees removes a significant layer of historic expertise and knowledge which would allow planning authorities to ignore the heritage of important sites such as we have here in Sherborne. We should increase the consideration of heritage significance to our community, not lessen it. We should also politely encourage the NT to follow their own letter of support to the GT and engage early with the Gardens Trust to save themselves and everyone else a lot of time and effort.
