The application to develop Leaden Hall and build and archive will not be heard until after September 2026.
The Grade I building continues to deteriorate.
The Leaden Hall proposal has yet to be heard by the Planning Committee. The consistent stalling by Salisbury Dean and Chapter, submitting successive rounds of extra documentation, has meant this proposal continues to drag, despite being filed in 2024.
We have now been informed in new documentation that the application is on hold, pending the Environmental Agency’s September release of updated flood risk mapping in the area surrounding Leaden Hall.
The Grade I building continues to sit uncared for, deteriorating, in the interim.
One of Save Leaden Hall’s many concerns with the Dean and Chapter’s proposal has always been the location of the new archive building on a functional floodplain. The applicant continues to argue the archive will be sited just feet away from the floodplain, and thus is entirely safe from risk. This assumption out of line with the Environmental Agency’s own policy in the Avon Hampshire Management Catchment to require a 38% uplift to peak flows due to Climate Change expectations. Ironically, the Environmental Agency has continuously supported the proposal at Leaden Hall, and has failed to elaborate, despite being called for comment on these environmental concerns repeatedly. Read independent flood risk challenges (01/04/26) and the EA’s responses (14/04/26) on the planning portal (search PL/2024/00373) . We further argue that a matter of feet is not sufficient when priceless medieval manuscripts are at risk. Even without the manuscripts, locating a new building in flood risk zone 3b (or 3a in certain cases, as at Leaden Hall) is against the Wiltshire Strategic Flood Risk Assessment policy. This point was raised by WHBT’s comments on 31/03/26, with the recommendation that the proposal be paused until full flood mapping could be publicly accessed.
A commitment to consult up-to-date flooding analysis is favourable outcome, but Leaden Hall cannot continue to lie abandoned for months on end. We await the new flood mapping documentation to assess the true risks of this plan’s site bordering on the water meadows landscape.
More crucially, we hope the council considers taking more assertive action, as the Dean and Chapter cannot be allowed to indefinitely delay this application, in the hopes of guaranteeing their own success, at the cost of Leaden Hall’s irreplaceable historic fabric. Tactically employed, poor planning practice should not be rewarded when Grade I buildings are at risk.