Up to 910 Green Belt homes at Foots Farm have gone to appeal, 177 days after the deadline to decide them passed. One of 502 neighbours commented.

Plans for up to 910 homes on Green Belt farmland south-east of Billericay have been taken out of Basildon Council’s hands. The developers lodged an appeal on Friday 21 August because the council never decided the application.

The council’s own planning register logs the appeal as 26/00050/NONDET, type “Non-determination”, status “Appeal Lodged”. The underlying application, 25/01466/OUT, was still marked “Awaiting decision” when we checked on Saturday.

The dates are the whole of the argument. The application was validated on 5 November 2025. The register records a determination deadline of 25 February 2026. That date passed 177 days before the appeal was lodged, and it has now passed by more than six months.

Timeline of the Foots Farm application: validated 5 November 2025, determination deadline 25 February 2026, consultation closed 15 August 2026, appeal lodged 21 August 2026, still undecided on 6 September 2026, with the gap between deadline and appeal marked as 177 days late.
Every date here comes from the council's own planning register for 25/01466/OUT and the appeal record 26/00050/NONDET.
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What is proposed at Foots Farm

The site is 56.89 hectares of farmland east of Southend Road, at Foots Farm in Great Burstead, in the Burstead ward. All of it is Green Belt. The applicants are Obsidian Strategic, the Brentwood Roman Catholic Diocese Trustee and H.R. Philpot & Son Barleylands Limited.

Their planning statement and environmental statement summary set out:

  • up to 910 homes, of which 50%, or 455, would be affordable
  • land for a three-form entry primary school and a 72-place nursery, 3.09 hectares, taking around 630 pupils
  • eight Gypsy and Traveller pitches
  • 23.32 hectares of open space, 41% of the site, including 11 hectares of Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace
  • three commercial units and a community hub
  • vehicle access from Southend Road, the A129, and from Coxes Farm Road

Everything except the points of access is reserved for later, so the layout, scale and appearance are not fixed by this application.

The Green Belt argument

The applicants do not dispute that the land is Green Belt. They argue it is grey belt, the category introduced to the National Planning Policy Framework in December 2024, and that building on it is therefore “not inappropriate” rather than something needing very special circumstances.

Their statement leans on scale to make the point. Green Belt covers 63% of Basildon borough, 6,950 hectares. This site is 0.82% of that.

The council’s own numbers work against it

A non-determination appeal is decided by a planning inspector, not by councillors, and the inspector weighs the council’s housing land supply. Basildon’s position is weak, and the council says so itself.

Its Five Year Housing Land Supply Update 2026-2031, published in July 2026, reports:

  • a five-year requirement of 7,731 homes, against an annual requirement of 1,546
  • an identified supply of 3,171 homes, which is 41% of that requirement
  • 2.05 years of deliverable housing supply
  • a shortfall of 4,560 homes

The same report lists the permissions the council expects to improve that figure, including 480 homes north of London Road in Billericay and 130 south of London Road.

Almost nobody wrote in

The council consulted 502 neighbours about the application. The register records one comment received, and it was an objection. Separately, 94 statutory and internal consultees were consulted and 20 responded.

That is a thin public response for a scheme of this size. It matches what we found on the 250 homes proposed off Laindon Road, where no resident had written in either.

What it means for you

The decision has moved from Basildon Council to the Planning Inspectorate. Councillors will not vote on it.

  • Comments on an appeal are limited. GOV.UK guidance says that if you took part in the original application, the council must tell you within five working days of the appeal’s start date whether you can comment.
  • The deadline is then five weeks from that start date.
  • The council’s appeal record shows no validated or started date yet, so that clock has not begun. The Planning Inspectorate’s own casework portal was returning a gateway error to us on Saturday, so we could not confirm a start date there either. We will update this page when one appears.
  • The full application file, all 67 documents, stays readable on the council’s planning portal.

We track new applications and decisions across the borough on our Basildon planning news page.

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