Councillors approved 237 more homes at Malabar off Staverton Road on 22 September, taking the Daventry estate to 655 of 1,100. The mix, rents and concerns.
The next 237 homes at Malabar, the new neighbourhood on Daventry’s south-west edge, have planning approval. West Northamptonshire Council’s Strategic Planning Committee backed the scheme on Tuesday 22 September. The decision notice was issued on Friday 25 September. (planning register, 2026/1216/MAR)
Spitfire Homes announced the approval the same day as “240 premium new homes”. (Spitfire Homes) The approved plans are for 237. They cover Phases 2A, 3A and 3C, south of the homes already built and occupied off Staverton Road.
What was approved
This is a reserved matters decision. The principle of building up to 1,100 homes here was settled in November 2021, when outline permission DA/2019/0750 was granted. This approval fixes the detail: layout, appearance, scale and landscaping.
The committee report sets out the homes:
| Size | For sale | Affordable | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 bedroom | 10 | 9 | 19 |
| 2 bedrooms | 33 | 28 | 61 |
| 3 bedrooms | 87 | 22 | 109 |
| 4 bedrooms | 44 | 4 | 48 |
| Total | 174 | 63 | 237 |
The 63 affordable homes are 27% of the phase. They split three ways:
- 28 for affordable rent
- 25 for shared ownership
- 10 for social rent
The published report first gave the share as 36% and the affordable rent count as 29. An update sheet tabled at the meeting corrected both to 27% and 28, which are the figures that add up. (committee update sheet, 22 September 2026)
The phase also includes:
- a neighbourhood play area at Stepnell Park, with two multi-use games areas, a zip line, a giant swing and a slide
- a second, local play area at High Point Park, with a community orchard and raised planting beds
- five “play on the way” stops along the green links
- foot and cycle paths joining the earlier phases and the land to the south
Officers told the committee that no residents wrote in, for or against. No consultee objected. (committee report)
Three questions from Daventry Town Council
The town council supported the officers’ advice but asked for three things to be clarified.
- No five-bedroom homes. The phase has none. Spitfire’s agent told officers there is a lack of demand for five-bedroom homes in the Daventry market, and officers accepted that.
- Parking. Members were concerned that the number of spaces per home could cause congestion across the estate. Officers said every home has off-road parking on a driveway or in a parking court, and the council’s highways team raised no concern with the numbers.
- Solar panels only on the homes for sale. In-roof solar panels are proposed for all 174 market homes and none of the 63 affordable ones. Spitfire said this matches earlier phases, because housing associations “do not typically require them within their specification”.
The report also records that the phase does not meet the housing mix in the adopted Daventry Local Plan. Officers accepted it because it follows the mix in the council’s draft new Local Plan, which carries only limited weight at this stage.
The clustering row that was settled before committee
Daventry’s Local Plan asks for affordable homes in groups of 5 to 20 on schemes of more than 200 homes. Spitfire’s first layout put the affordable homes in four clusters, all in the north east corner of the site. The council’s housing team said that was not acceptable.
The revised layout has three clusters: 13, 16 and 34 homes. The largest is split by a road. Officers conceded “a degree of conflict” with the policy remains. The housing association taking the homes, Platform, told the council it prefers identifiable clusters for management reasons.
Badby House and Badby parish
Badby House, the Grade II listed former monastery that is now a care home, sits just south of the site. The council’s heritage officer noted that the built edge “has crept a little nearer to the site boundary than in the approved 2019 masterplan”. Officers pointed to the advance woodland and hedge planting already in place along that boundary. They also noted a lower density near the house: 31.6 homes per hectare, against about 36.9 across the phase.
Badby Parish Council raised concern about “encroachment into the gap between Daventry and Badby”. It asked for Community Infrastructure Levy money to go to the school the new homes will use, to traffic calming in the village, and to a safe cycle path between the estate and Badby. Officers replied that the gap is set by the 2021 outline permission and that levy spending is not a matter for this decision.
How much of Malabar is now approved
Four reserved matters approvals on the register now cover 655 homes:
- 222 in Phase 1A, approved March 2023
- 68 in Phase 1B, approved October 2023
- 128, approved October 2024 (2024/2213/RM)
- 237 in Phases 2A, 3A and 3C, approved this month
That leaves 445 of the permitted 1,100 still to come forward in detail. The outline permission also includes a two-form-entry primary school and a local centre. Neither is part of this decision. The rest of the Daventry South West allocation, 140 homes on the Drayton Lodge land, is a separate permission being built by Bellway.
Spitfire says the scheme will bring more than £12 million of investment to the area and “support the employment of over 3,400 people”. It has not published how those figures were worked out.
What it means for you
- If you live on Malabar’s first phases, the land to your south will be the next building site. The report says the applicant expects this phase to “follow on seamlessly” from the completion of Phase 1.
- If you are looking for affordable housing in Daventry, 63 homes are coming, 10 of them at social rent. The report names Platform as the housing association taking them.
- If you want a five-bedroom house, this phase has none.
- If you live in Badby, the parish’s request for traffic calming and a cycle path was not decided here. It is a question for how the council spends the levy money.
For every planning decision in the district, see Northampton planning news.
Sources
- Planning application 2026/1216/MAR, West Northamptonshire Council planning register: committee report, committee update sheet and decision notice of 25 September 2026.
- Planning application 2024/2213/RM, West Northamptonshire Council planning register.
- Planning permission secured to deliver 240 premium new homes at Malabar, Daventry, Spitfire Homes, 25 September 2026.
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