Published24 April 2026Updated6 October 2026
Windy Rise Gets the Green Light: Erewash Borough Council Approves the Hillside Home That Made Councillors Say 'Thunderbirds Are Go'
When a planning committee member reaches for a Thunderbirds reference, the building is clearly doing something right. Erewash Borough Council approved the Windy Rise replacement dwelling 11 votes to one. Here's how JSA Architects made the case — and what the committee had to say about it.
There are planning committee meetings that pass without incident. The officer presents the report, the committee nods in broadly the expected direction, and that's that.
The August 2025 Erewash Borough Council planning committee was not one of those meetings.
When the proposed design for Windy Rise, Little Eaton came before the committee, one councillor described it as an 'architectural masterpiece.' Another said she hadn't seen anything like it outside of television. A third went with 'Thunderbirds are go.' The vote was 11 in favour, one against.
Planning approved.
JSA Architects submitted the application to Erewash Borough Council on behalf of the de Saegar family earlier in 2025. The site is a steeply elevated hillside plot within the Green Belt above Little Eaton - a former bungalow destroyed in an arson attack in 2017, rewilded ever since, and now the subject of an approved scheme that is, by any measure, a significant departure from what came before.
What the Committee Was Looking At
The Windy Rise scheme is a two-storey replacement dwelling designed to sit into a steeply elevated Green Belt hillside above Little Eaton, a few miles north of Derby. The design language is contemporary - a building that makes no attempt to disguise what it is, while taking considerable care about how it sits within its landscape.
The internal arrangement includes four bedrooms, two dressing rooms, an indoor courtyard, a home gym and changing room, and an indoor swimming pool. The building is designed to be dug into the hillside, keeping its profile low and its relationship to the surrounding countryside considered.
For context: the previous dwelling on this site was a bungalow that hadn't been occupied since 2014 and had been gone since 2017. The site subsequently housed little except brambles and whatever wildlife moved in during the intervening years. The committee was not, it is fair to say, weighing the new building against an obvious architectural precedent.
The Planning Case: How a Green Belt Application Gets Approved
Planning applications in the Green Belt start from a position of restriction. The default, across the country, is that new dwellings in the Green Belt are not acceptable. Getting one approved requires either fitting within one of the specific exceptions that planning policy sets out, or arguing one's way past those restrictions - and the latter rarely works.
The policy route for Windy Rise was the former. The site qualifies as previously developed land - brownfield land - in Green Belt terms, because the domestic curtilage of the former bungalow (the plot, garden, and grounds that belonged to the original dwelling) retains that classification even after the building itself has gone. That matters, because it opens the door to a specific policy argument that a completely new-build Green Belt site cannot make.
JSA's planning case argued the application was acceptable under Saved Policies GB1 and GB2 in Erewash Borough Council's Local Plan. GB1 establishes the general principle that development in the Green Belt is resisted. GB2 sets out the exceptions - among them, the redevelopment of brownfield land within the Green Belt where the proposal consolidates existing built development and is of a scale and character that respects its village setting.
The planning officer's report concluded that the former curtilage constituted brownfield land, that the proposal was consistent with GB2, and that it was acceptable under the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The design's response to the hillside was central to that conclusion: by sitting the building into the slope, the scheme is - in the officer's own assessment - largely concealed from views across the surrounding countryside. The building doesn't avoid being in the Green Belt. It just avoids drawing unnecessary attention to itself while there.
Erewash Borough Council were satisfied on neighbour amenity, too. The separation distances from the neighbouring dwellings - Kenda, Magnolia, and Mount Pleasant - were assessed as sufficient to avoid significant impacts from overlooking, overshadowing, or overbearing, notwithstanding the building's scale.
Parish council and local residents had objected on grounds of access and drainage. Those objections were considered and addressed. The vote was 11-1 in favour.
What This Approval Means in Practice
Green Belt planning approval doesn't happen because the design is beautiful, though it helps when the planning committee thinks so. It happens when the policy case is clearly established, the design addresses the specific constraints of the site, and every foreseeable objection has a considered, evidence-based response.
Windy Rise checks those boxes. The brownfield argument gave the application a policy route. The design's integration into the hillside addressed the visual impact argument directly. The separation distances handled neighbour amenity. The drainage and access concerns - the basis of the parish council's objection - were responded to in the submission. None of that happened by accident.
What the planning committee's response also demonstrates - in its occasionally enthusiastic way - is that Green Belt approval doesn't have to mean mediocre design. The restrictions around scale and character don't preclude ambition. They just require that the ambition is expressed with sufficient care about how the building relates to its setting.
Windy Rise was approved precisely because the design earns its place on that hillside. The planning officer's report said as much. Eleven councillors agreed. One didn't. Thunderbirds are go.
What Happens Next
Planning approval is the end of one process and the start of another. The approved scheme at Windy Rise now moves into technical design - the detailed drawings, structural calculations, building regulations, and coordination work that turns an approved planning application into a buildable specification.
Working on a site in Erewash, Amber Valley, or elsewhere in Derbyshire? We handle commissions from across the county and know the planning landscape well - in both senses.
"JSA have been most helpful from the initial meeting through to the production of a quality plan for our project , superb communication of progress with our plans and clear costing and timescales. We are very pleased with the service in what has been a complex project and would thoroughly recommend their services."
Martin de Saegar - Land Owner
faq's
Common Questions
Yes. The committee approved the Windy Rise replacement dwelling by 11 votes to one.
Positive enough that a committee member reached for a Thunderbirds reference during the meeting, a strong signal for a Green Belt scheme that started from a position of restriction.
Green Belt applications begin from a default of restriction. Approval comes from building a case that addresses that restriction directly: demonstrating very special circumstances or showing the development falls within a recognised exception, not from the design alone.
Approval is the end of one process and the start of another. The approved scheme still needs to satisfy any conditions attached to the permission before work can begin on site.
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