Slate Meadow,

Slate Meadow has been complicated and challenging site to deliver for Croudace Homes. Consequently, it has been hugely satisfying to see the diggers on site early in 2025. 

Our involvement in promoting the land dates to 2016, when Slate Meadow formed part of the Green Belt: albeit reserved land for future development. Working closely with the then, Wycombe District Council (now Buckinghamshire District Council), the practice promoted the site for early release for 150 houses through the Wycombe Local Plan. Guiding and taking part in several visioning exercises and community engagement schemes, the site was eventually removed from the Green Belt and allocated for development in the Plan following its examination in public. 

Alongside this and working within the parameters of a Planning Performance Agreement, the practice and sub-consultant team drafted the Slate Meadow Development Brief on behalf of the Council. The brief and the accompanying masterplan framework was adopted by the Council in 2018 to sit alongside the then emerging / draft site-specific local plan policy.  This exercise was challenging and required regular meetings, promotion and negotiations with the Slate Meadow Liaison Group - a mix of district and parish councillors, statutory consultees and representatives of the local community. Ultimately this was a positive process.   

Following numerous presentations to Council Planning Committees and after resolving the call-in procedures with the Secretary of State, the outline and reserved matters applications were eventually approved in 2019 and 2023 respectively. This was followed up with complex procedures to discharge a raft of pre-commencement conditions. 

After such a long period of gestation and commitment by Croudace Homes and all involved it is terrific to see work starting on site.