WESTBURY Town Council has stated further objections to the proposal of 300 new homes on the land at Westbury sailing lake, based on matters relating to appearance, layout, landscaping and scale.
Included in the objections is their request again for the provision of a bridge, from Mane Way over the railway line to the new development, to be compulsory and guaranteed before the development is built, in order to stop the influx of traffic using Station Road and Oldfield Road.
In regards to the bridge a concerned resident on Facebook said, “This vital infrastructure is needed to help reduce the terrible traffic problems in the town which are only going to get worse.
“There is no point just moaning, people must go to the Wiltshire Planning Department website and make a comment, otherwise our objections will be totally ignored.”
Cllr Ian Cunningham, said at the town council’s highways, planning and development meeting on Monday 15th January, “I have a number of concerns I’d like to put forward regarding this application. The first one being the drawings of the houses, most of these are three-storey and personally I don’t like three-storey. I think they are out of place in a predominantly two-storey town.
“I also think the site is too crowded. They have given a parking analysis and I think there are some problems in there as some houses don’t have sufficient parking.
“I will also state that I am concerned that they are putting a car park in; if you don’t have any kind of parking control in this site it can become an overflow to the station and what will happen is the residents will come back to us and ask us to put money in to add yellow lines or residence parking schemes to stop it.”
Mayor cllr Gordon King added, “I agree with you on the terms of objecting to this, I think it is a terrible plan. However, it is a reserved matters item, so it will be difficult to object. Having said that I do believe it to be atrocious”
A reserved matters application is additional information regarding size, layout and appearance of an already-agreed outline planning permission. When all of the reserved matters have been approved, work may begin on the site.
Westbury Town Council responded to the reserved matters application with, “This development by reason of its design, layout, built form, height and mass provides a hard-urban townscape that does very little justice to the character of its setting which is primarily wetland in its nature. For this reason, the development engenders a design and style of dwelling that is both compressed and dense and is out of keeping with the semi-rural nature of the location contrary to Core Policy 57 (iii).
“This development despite its density and compressed layout does not provide sufficient contribution to local infrastructure needs such as a bridge over the railway or an alternative link to the station contrary to core policy 3 (infrastructure). There also appears to insufficient parking space allocated,” and therefore objected.
Linden Homes Western, who will be the developers of the new proposed site said, “The first phase of construction, due to begin imminently, will be the enabling works for the new sailing club and car park, including all the ground works and the slab for the club house, with work on the first homes programmed to start in November.”
For more information on this planning application or to comment, use the reference 17/12194/REM on the Wiltshire planning website.
