Loo paper king wins green belt mansion planning battle

He made his fortune out of loo rolls, but Majid Hussain is set to become king of the castle after what has been called a “once in a generation” planning victory, which has allowed him to build a 20,000 sq ft mansion in the middle of the green belt.
Majid, 47, and his 66-year-old father Jawid Hussain, are among Blackburn’s richest and most successful entrepreneurs after making their fortune through Accrol, the company Jawid founded in 1993, which produces millions of toilet rolls and kitchen towels every day. They stood aside from running Accrol when it was floated on the stock market in 2016 and the company was sold to a Portugal-based company for £130.8 million this year.
However, Hussain’s reputation has now been soiled, at least in the eyes of some residents, after he won permission to build a family mansion in the green belt near the Lancashire town this month, despite dozens of objections. The huge mock-Georgian pile in the village of Mellor will cost £6 million to build and contain a swimming pool, mock-classical temple, mausoleum, lake bridge and obelisk — all stretching over 16 acres of parkland.
At a time when Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, is pledging to ease tough restrictions on building in the green belt in order to construct affordable homes, Hussain’s victory is an insight into how those wanting to build large and expensive homes can use existing laws to get approval in protected rural areas.
The green belt, established 70 years ago, covers 6,326 square miles — 12.6 per cent of England — and was designed to stop cities from sprawling into the countryside. Because self-interested councils have the right to define it, it has more than doubled since the late 1970s and grown by almost 100 square miles in the past two years.
However, four years ago, the Hussain family submitted grand plans to build their family seat, Woodfold Villa — a six-bedroom mansion — in this seemingly prohibited zone by relying on the little-known Paragraph 84e of the National Planning Policy Framework, a document that sets out the government’s planning policies for England and which is being reviewed by Labour.
Paragraph 84e states that applications for homes on isolated areas in the countryside should be approved only if the design is of exceptional quality, reflects the highest standards in architecture, helping to raise the standard of design in rural areas, and would “significantly enhance its immediate setting, and be sensitive to the defining characteristics of the local area”. Only 150 schemes have ever been granted permission since 1997, when this clause was introduced.
The Hussains claimed their mansion would meet this criteria because of its exceptional quality, due to their desire to posthumously complete the estate of Henry Sudell, a Blackburn cotton magnate from 200 years ago, who owned nearby Woodfold Hall but went bankrupt in the early 19th century before he could build a second villa to host “his notoriously lavish parties”. The villa they want to build would be in the neoclassical style popular in the Georgian period, borrowing from Roman and Renaissance architecture and be filled with porticoes, columns, pediments and arches, and so would enhance the local landscape, they claim. Woodfold Hall, Sudell’s original home, was turned into flats long ago.
At the same time, the Hussains claimed that the mansion would also comply with Paragraph 154g of the planning framework, which relaxes building on the green belt if the new building can be proven to be “the partial or complete redevelopment of previously developed land” and not cause “substantial harm” to the countryside. The family said the development would replace an existing equestrian facility, whose owner would be bought out, rather than being put on virgin land.
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Francis Shaw, of Shaw & Jagger, the architects used by the Hussains, says his firm has a particular pedigree for getting plans through using Paragraph 84e, having won planning permission for the largest ever property to be built under the clause, 25,000 sq ft Croston Hall near Chorley, Lancashire, in 2015.
“They [the Hussains] contacted us out of the blue because we specialise in tough stuff,” Shaw says. “He [Majid Hussain] asked us what chance did we think of getting through a normal planning approval? And I said 1 per cent or nil if I’m being honest. Then he said what about appeal? And I said 50-50. So on that basis they went for it.”
The Hussains’ plans immediately ran into furious and predictable local opposition, with 31 complaints in total including Mellor parish council and conservation charities. One of the parish council’s objections was that it would be just 100 yards from nearby houses.
It added: “Mellor parish council regards the design to be completely incongruous in its scale and totally out of character with the other buildings in the area.”
In the face of the opposition, Hussain’s plans were turned down by Ribble Valley borough council, which said in January 2023 that it would be an “inappropriate development which is, by definition, harmful to the green belt and should not be approved except in very special circumstances”.
It added: “There are no very special circumstances that exist to justify allowing this inappropriate development and loss of openness.”
However, in a report published three weeks ago, the planning inspectorate stunned villagers by overturning the ruling, saying the development was exceptional in quality, was isolated and would improve the area.
“It is clear from the substantial evidence of experts in the field that the design of the proposal, its orientation, scale, detail, proportions, relationship to its site, the wider context, size, scale, form and layout all represent the highest standards of architecture,” the inspector’s report said.
Campaigners who spoke to The Times said they were “astonished” by the verdict, but had decided not to speak on the record because Ribble Valley had decided to take the decision to judicial review at the High Court. A Ribble Valley borough council spokesman said: “The council is looking to challenge the decision and has sent a letter before action to the Treasury Solicitor. It would not be appropriate to comment further at this stage.”
Zack Simons, a barrister at Landmark chambers, who specialises in green belt cases, explains that the vast difference in views between the council and the planning inspectorate was not unusual.
“A planning committee is subject to political pressure, internal and external — both ‘red, blue and yellow’ political, but also just from a local level. Members on the committee, in the end, need to get re-elected,” he says.
“The officers who write up their reports for the planning committees know that the reports are going to be read by elected members and that creates a very, very different dynamic to a planning appeal.
“On the other hand, a completely disinterested, impartial third party — an external planning inspector being parachuted into an area, hearing from everybody — reaches an independent view. Not influenced by the heat of local political concerns.”
Ribble Valley’s judicial review could cost taxpayers several thousand pounds just to launch the case, and the council could end up running up six figures in barristers’ fees — paid for by the taxpayer — if it loses.
“In order to win, they’d need to identify a legal error,” says Simons, “and that will be no easy task”.