Permission for 142 homes and an 80-bed care home north of Shenfield came on 17 September, 16 months after the vote. Contributions total £3.9m.
Planning permission for 142 homes and an 80-bed care home on farmland north of Shenfield was issued on Thursday 17 September 2026, sixteen months after the committee that approved it.
The decision notice for application 24/00051/FUL is signed by the council’s chief executive and dated 17 September. Brentwood’s Planning Committee voted to approve the scheme on 13 May 2025. The gap is the Section 106 agreement, which was not signed until 24 August 2026 (Brentwood Borough Council planning register).
The applicant is Countryside Partnerships, whose registered office on the decision notice is Countryside House, The Drive, Brentwood. The site is 4.5 hectares of agricultural land between the A12 to the north and Chelmsford Road to the south, about a kilometre from Shenfield station.
What has been permitted
The application is a hybrid, which means two different kinds of permission in one document.
The full permission, which can be built out as drawn, covers:
- 142 dwellings, a mix of apartments, terraced and semi-detached houses
- 50 of them affordable, which is 35% of the scheme
- public open space, a children’s play area and three connected green spaces
- sustainable drainage, landscaping and a new access from Chelmsford Road
The outline permission covers an 80-bed care home of up to three storeys, on a separate 0.56 hectare parcel with its own access. Only access and scale have been agreed. What it looks like, how it is laid out and how it is landscaped all come back to the council in a later reserved matters application (officer report, 13 May 2025).
Seven of the 142 are custom or self-build plots. The Section 106 requires them to be marketed on the council’s Self-Build and Custom Housebuilding Register for at least 18 months from the grant of permission.
Where the money goes
The heads of terms the committee approved list contributions of about £3.9m, most of it towards getting people out of Shenfield without a car.
The largest single line is £1,097,074 for public realm improvements at Brentwood and Shenfield railway stations, which is item T8 of the council’s Infrastructure Delivery Plan. Next to it sit £498,670 for a quietway cycle route, £370,000 towards improving public transport links between the site, Shenfield and Brentwood, £342,664 for walking and cycling links and £23,987 for cycle parking at the stations.
Essex County Council takes £542,693 for primary school places and £416,785 for secondary places, plus an unfixed sum towards buying half the land for the new primary school within the wider allocation. The borough takes £483,716 for sport, split between changing rooms, pitches, a sports hall, a swimming pool and £2,561 for indoor bowls. The health contribution is £56,777, and the library gets £11,047.60.
One caveat on those figures. They are the heads of terms the committee approved in May 2025, taken from the officer report. The signed agreement of 24 August 2026 is published on the register as a scanned document with no readable text, so we could not check it line by line against the report. If the final deed differs we will say so here.
What changes on Chelmsford Road
The conditions on the permission are where residents will notice it first. Before anyone moves in, the developer has to deliver:
- a toucan crossing on Chelmsford Road, signalised for pedestrians and cyclists, east of Fen Close
- upgrades to both bus stops by Fen Close, with the eastbound stop getting a lit shelter and both getting raised kerbs, new flags and poles, timetable displays and painted bus cages
- a 3 metre footway and cycleway along Chelmsford Road, narrowing to 2.5 metres only where tree roots need protecting, with a 0.5 metre buffer from the carriageway
- pedestrian refuge islands on Chelmsford Road
- two new junctions with clear visibility, one for the homes and a separate one for the care home
The developer also has to pay for a Traffic Regulation Order extending the 30mph limit on Chelmsford Road towards the A12 interchange, complete with a gateway feature and road markings, and £46,320 towards MOVA traffic signal control at the Chelmsford Road, Shenfield Road and Hutton Road junction. A further £10,000 is held for the South Essex Parking Partnership to put in parking restrictions on surrounding roads if overspill turns out to be a problem, repayable after seven years if it is not spent.
Other conditions require full fibre broadband to every home before occupation, a minimum 10.63% biodiversity net gain, and a travel information pack with six one-day public transport vouchers for each household.
The vote, and who spoke against
The committee heard from the Chelmsford Road Residents’ Association, which objected, and from the applicant. A statement from Ward Cllr Gordon objecting to the scheme was read out, and Cllr Worsfold also addressed the committee against it.
Members raised two concerns in particular: the amount of parking on a site they considered poorly connected, and the fact that the scheme provides no employment floorspace. The committee took a 15 minute break, then heard from Essex County Council’s strategic development engineer that the parking was acceptable.
The vote was 11 for, 2 against, none abstaining. Cllrs Mayo and Naylor voted against (minutes of the Planning Committee, 13 May 2025).
There is a detail in those minutes worth recording. They note that Ward Cllr N Cuthbert “also spoke opposing the application”, then that “Cllr Cuthbert” moved the motion to approve it, seconded by Cllr Dr Barrett, and that Cllr N Cuthbert then confirmed as Shenfield ward councillor and a committee member that she had entered the debate with an open mind. Two councillors named Cuthbert are listed in the votes in favour, and the minutes do not say which of them moved the motion.
This is one quarter of a bigger site
The land is part of site R03 in the borough’s Local Plan, adopted in March 2022 and known as Officer’s Meadow. The policy allocates the whole area for around 825 new homes, about 2.1 hectares for a primary school and early years nursery, a care home of around 60 beds, 5% self and custom build across the allocation and around 2 hectares of employment land.
R03 is being brought forward by four developers working to a shared masterplan framework rather than as one application. The officer report set out where each stood in May 2025:
| Developer | Homes | Position in May 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Croudace Homes | 344 | Refused, appeal inquiry held 11 February, decision awaited |
| Redrow Homes | 191 | Resolution to grant, S106 being progressed |
| Countryside Partnerships | 142 | Decided 13 May 2025, permission issued 17 September 2026 |
| Stonebond Properties | 38 | Resolution to grant, S106 to be signed 28 April |
The Countryside parcel is the one that has now cleared every stage. We have not been able to confirm the current position of the other three today, because the register’s keyword search was returning a server error, so treat that column as the position in May 2025 rather than the position this week.
What it means for you
If you live on Chelmsford Road or use the Fen Close bus stops, the crossing, the shelter and the wider footway are all tied to occupation of the new homes, not to the start of building. They arrive at the end of the process, not the beginning.
If you were objecting, the decision is made. The six month window for the applicant to appeal does not apply to objectors, and there is no further council stage for the 142 homes. The care home is different: its appearance, layout and landscaping still have to come back as a reserved matters application, which will be advertised and open to comment in the usual way. Applications for the first of those reserved matters must be made within two years.
If you are watching the wider site, the school land, the employment land and the rest of the 825 homes sit with the other three parcels, not this one. Members noted during the debate that this scheme provides no employment floorspace.
Our Brentwood planning news page tracks the borough’s larger applications, and you can check what is being decided near you on the council’s own register.
Have your say