Rushcliffe Borough Council last week approved outline consent for the homes off Shelford Road, on the edge of the village of Radcliffe-on-Trent, subject to final approval by the secretary of state.
A planning report said that the site is currently designated as green belt but has also recently been identified by the council as a preferred site to be removed from the green belt and allocated for residential development in the emerging Rushcliffe Local Plan Part 2.
It said that, while the plan has not yet been adopted, "it has gone through extensive examination and scrutiny as part of the identification of preferred sites documents".
The council’s "assessment of the site is that it has one of the lowest green belt values of all the green belt land assessed on the edge Radcliffe-on-Trent", it added.
The document said that Radcliffe-on-Trent is one of the council’s "identified key rural sustainable settlements identified for growth, where a minimum of 400 houses is proposed in the authority’s adopted core strategy".
It said the core strategy "acknowledges green belt release at Radcliffe-on-Trent is inevitable".
Planners considered that "the proposed development on the application site would entirely accord with the spatial strategy and housing objectives in the extant and emerging development plan", the report said.
Recommending approval, planners said the development would also "deliver a substantial amount of new housing including affordable housing in an area which has a significant under supply of deliverable housing sites and a severe need for additional affordable housing".
They added that the delivery of the site would help the council "to defend other parts of the borough in less sustainable locations from predatory applications for housing development".
The council resolved to approve the application but, due to the site’s green belt status, it will now be referred to the secretary of state.
