Marlow Studios Case Study: From Vision to Appeal Success

Some planning projects move steadily from submission to consent. Others take a longer, more demanding route. Marlow Studios was very much the latter. This ‘Marlow Studios case study’ tells the story of a major new film studio proposal to the east of Marlow. It is the story of ambition, challenge, professional judgement and perseverance. It is also a reminder that the planning system, while demanding, does work, even if the path to securing planning permission for a film studio development is not always straight.

Introduction – Setting the Context

This Marlow Studios case study explores how the scheme was conceived as a world-class facility to support the UK’s rapidly expanding film and television sector. At the national level, the proposal addressed a clear need for additional studio capacity and associated skills development. Locally, it represented a major investment opportunity, with the potential to deliver jobs, training, infrastructure and environmental improvements.

Arrow Planning became involved at an early stage. We were appointed as the second main consultant after Prior and Partners, who were leading on master planning and design. The consultant team was managed under the watchful eye of Third London Wall. From the outset, our role was to help shape the planning strategy for what was always going to be a complex and closely scrutinised film studio planning application.

The wider project team brought together an award-winning group of consultants, covering architecture (Wilkinson Eyre), landscape (Gillespie, Pegasus and SLR), transport (Waterman and SLR), ecology (Waterman), heritage (Waterman), economics (Volterra) and environmental assessment (Waterman). This breadth of expertise was essential. Schemes of this scale do not succeed through a single discipline. They succeed through coordinated, consistent and collaborative effort.

The Proposal – Film Studio Planning Application

The proposal was for a purpose-built film and television studio campus on land to the east of Marlow, close to the A404 and Marlow Road.

In broad terms, the development included:

• Sound stages and production facilities
• Workshops, offices and studio support space
• A studio hub and skills and training academy
• Community facilities and publicly accessible land
• Significant transport infrastructure improvements
• Long-term landscape, biodiversity and ecological enhancement.

The scale was substantial. The ambition was unapologetic. But the scheme was also carefully considered, supported by a full Environmental Impact Assessment and a wide range of technical studies.

From the outset, the project was structured around four clear organising principles, which we referred to as the Four Pillars. These provided a consistent framework for design development, technical assessment and the planning case.

The Four Pillars 

Economy and Training 

At its core, the project was about supporting a nationally important industry. The studios have the potential to generate significant value creation (Approximately 3.5 million GVA per annum) and employment, both directly and through the wider supply chain (Approximately 4000 direct and indirect jobs). Central to this pillar was a comprehensive skills and workforce development programme, designed to widen access to careers in film and high-end television and to address recognised skills shortages within the industry.

Design

Design quality was fundamental to the scheme. Despite its scale, the studios were conceived as a carefully planned campus rather than an industrial estate. The layout, massing and architectural approach were shaped by the site’s context, with a strong emphasis on landscape structure, visual containment, long-term placemaking and the integration of community facilities and publicly accessible spaces. Design was not treated as mitigation, but as a core component of the proposal.

Sustainability

Sustainability was embedded across the project, shaping decisions on energy use, transport, water management and construction from the outset. The scheme incorporated energy-efficient design and operational measures, targeting a BREEAM rating of Excellent / Very Good, alongside robust approaches to construction and operational efficiency. Sustainable travel was actively promoted across all modes, including two new bus services, enhanced walking and cycling routes (including a new bridge over the A404) and strategic highway improvements. Private car use was robustly limited. Water efficiency and fully integrated SuDS formed a core part of the environmental strategy, ensuring long-term resilience and performance.

Ecology

The site’s legacy as former mineral workings and landfill presented an opportunity for ecological enhancement. The proposals sought not only to mitigate impacts, but to deliver a meaningful 20% net gain for biodiversity. This included habitat creation, long-term ecological management, watercourse improvements and expanded public access to green space, forming part of a wider environmental strategy.

These four pillars shaped every stage of the project and provided the ‘golden thread’ that ran through the scheme design.

Why Marlow? Site Selection for a Film Studio Development

Site selection was a critical issue.

The land at Westhorpe Park was previously disturbed, having been used for landfill following mineral extraction. It was not pristine countryside. Its location, close to strategic road infrastructure and within reasonable travel distance of a skilled workforce, made it a logical candidate for development of this nature.

Importantly, the site sat within the established film and television cluster, where proximity to skilled crews is a decisive factor. Unlike many industries, film and television production relies on a highly specialised workforce that cannot easily relocate. Travel time matters.

The proposal also aligned with national policy ambitions to support the creative industries, promote inward investment and strengthen the UK’s position as a global centre for film and television production.

None of this removed the site’s constraints.

But it did make an important contribution, in the form of ‘other material considerations’, to the planning balance.

The Planning Challenges – Green Belt and Technical Constraints

From the outset, it was clear that the project would face significant challenges.

The site lay within the Green Belt, meaning that the film studio development was, by definition, inappropriate and required the demonstration of Very Special Circumstances (VSCs). This is one of the highest bars in planning. The planning case, therefore, had to show that the benefits of the scheme clearly outweighed the identified harm.

Other key challenges included:

• Landscape and visual effects, including the relationship to the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
• Detailed transport modelling and highways capacity
• Biodiversity impacts, biodiversity net gain and long-term management
• Recreational pressure, SANG provision and Country Park policy considerations
• High levels of community interest and scrutiny
• Sequential testing, both in Green Belt terms and in relation to flood risk.

Each of these issues required detailed technical work, refinement of the scheme and careful planning judgment. None had simple answers. All required engagement, evidence and, at times, professional disagreement.

Pre-Application and Application Process

Pre-application discussions extended over approximately 18 months. This period was not about seeking early endorsement, but about testing the proposal, understanding concerns and refining the scheme. 

The film studio planning application was submitted in July 2022, supported by a comprehensive suite of documents. As the assessment progressed, further information was provided through a series of addendum submissions. These responded to consultee comments, addressed emerging issues and refined the planning case. 

This iterative process is often misunderstood. It is not a sign of weakness. On complex schemes, it is a sign of engagement and adaptation. 

Arrow Planning’s role throughout was to: 

• Maintain a clear and consistent planning narrative 
• Coordinate technical inputs across disciplines 
• Manage risk and expectation 
• Keep the Four Pillars firmly in focus. 

Committee Refusal

The application was first considered by Buckinghamshire Council’s Strategic Sites Planning Committee in October 2023.

On that occasion, members did not determine the application. Instead, it was deferred, with a request for additional information and further negotiation. The deferral was significant. It reflected a recognition of the scale of the benefits on offer and indicated that there was, at that point, an appetite within the Council to explore whether the proposal could be shaped into an acceptable form.

Following the deferral, further technical work was undertaken and discussions continued with officers. Additional information was submitted, addressing the matters raised by committee and consultees. As is often the case with schemes of this nature, the issues were complex and interdependent. Progress was made, but not all differences of professional judgement were resolved.

• The application returned to committee in May 2024, at which point members resolved to refuse planning permission.
• The refusal was founded primarily on the Council’s conclusions that:
• The development constituted inappropriate development in the Green Belt and that Very Special Circumstances had not been demonstrated
• The proposals conflicted with Country Park policy objectives
• There would be unacceptable landscape and visual impacts, including effects on the setting of the Chilterns AONB
• The scheme would result in highways and transport impacts that were considered unacceptable
• There would be impacts on residential amenity
• Wider spatial strategy and mitigation considerations weighed against the proposal.

Decisions of this nature are rarely straightforward. Officers and members were required to weigh substantial economic, skills and environmental benefits against acknowledged policy harm, within a highly constrained planning context and under considerable public and political scrutiny.

The decision was disappointing for the client and the project team, particularly given the earlier deferral and subsequent engagement. However, it was also recognised as the outcome of a genuinely difficult and finely balanced planning judgement, rather than a failure of process.

Crucially, the refusal did not undermine confidence in the scheme’s fundamentals. Instead, it marked the point at which the planning debate moved into a different forum — one that would ultimately reach a different conclusion.

The Decision to Appeal

Following the committee’s refusal, the decision to pursue a planning appeal was carefully and deliberately made.

This was not about simply revisiting arguments that had already been aired. It was about recognising that the proposal raised matters of planning judgement and balance that could be assessed differently within the planning system.

Arrow Planning prepared the Statement of Case, which set out, at a high level, the strategy for the appeal. Rather than rehearse every technical detail, the Statement focused on framing the planning balance clearly and coherently. It acknowledged harm where it arose, but explained why, when considered in the round, the benefits of the proposal justified the grant of planning permission.

At this point in the project Carter Jonas were appointed to take the appeal forward. Their involvement brought a fresh pair of eyes to the project. Crucially, this was a team untainted by the preceding few years of detailed negotiation, incremental change and entrenched positions. That distance allowed the appeal case to be approached with renewed clarity, challenging assumptions on all sides and refining how the issues were presented.

The appeal also operated within a fundamentally different decision-making framework.

Committee decisions are inevitably influenced by local political pressures and a strong focus on immediate local impacts. That is not a criticism; it is an inherent feature of democratic decision-making at a local level. However, it can mean that locally perceived harm carries disproportionate weight, while wider economic, strategic and societal benefits are more difficult to give full effect to.

By contrast, an appeal is determined independently, against policy, evidence and the overall planning balance. Local impacts remain important, but they are assessed alongside benefits that extend beyond the site and the immediate community. For a project like Marlow Studios, where many of the benefits are regional or national in nature, that distinction was critical.

The decision to appeal was therefore not a rejection of the Council’s role or concerns. It was an acknowledgement that the planning system is deliberately designed to accommodate reasonable professional disagreement, and to provide an alternative forum where that disagreement can be tested objectively.

As the appeal outcome would later demonstrate, that different forum reached a different conclusion.

Conclusion

In November 2025, the appeal decision was issued.

The appeal was allowed.

Planning permission for the film studio was granted.

The Inspector’s conclusions, taken together with the subsequent ministerial decision, provided independent confirmation that the planning judgements made throughout the application process were sound. The assessment of harm, the weight attributed to benefits, and the overall planning balance were all tested rigorously and ultimately endorsed.

That matters.

On long, complex projects, it is easy to doubt your own judgement, particularly when faced with sustained opposition, policy constraint and finely balanced decisions. Years of negotiation, challenge and scrutiny can erode confidence, even where the fundamentals of a scheme remain strong. Independent confirmation that those fundamentals were right is not about vindication for its own sake; it is about reassurance that professional judgement, applied carefully and honestly, has value within the planning system.

This Marlow Studios case study is a clear example of how complex planning projects rarely follow a straight line. They demand patience, resilience and a willingness to hold onto the core principles of a proposal, even when the process becomes difficult. They also demonstrate why the planning system provides more than one decision-making route, precisely because reasonable professionals can, in good faith, reach different conclusions.

For Arrow Planning, the Marlow Studios project reflects the type of work we are increasingly asked to undertake: guiding complex and sensitive schemes through uncertainty, maintaining clarity of purpose, and supporting clients who are prepared to take the long view. It also reinforces an important lesson, that confidence in sound planning judgment should not be abandoned simply because the road becomes challenging.

In the next blog, we look more closely at the skills, judgement and strategy required to navigate projects like this, and what planners really do when the answers are not obvious.

By Rob Harrison, Associate Director – BSC MSC MRTPI.