Around 60 people attended the public meeting organised by the Parish Council on Friday 13, July in the Lyon Hall. In addition there were seven members of the Parish Council present along with Maryjayne Rees (Clerk), Karen Calder (Shropshire County Councillor), Graham Tongue (Leverhulme Estates), Tony Barton (Donald Insall Associates Architects) and Jo Lovelady (Strutt & Parker Agents).
Before the meeting people were able to examine the plans and other documentation associated with the planning application.
The meeting was chaired by John Powell who introduced the issue under consideration, namely the proposal to build 50 dwellings on land to the east of Shrewsbury Street and how the Parish Council should respond to it. The Parish Council had been given an extension by the Planning Dept. and needed to provide their comments by Tuesday 17 July. (NB Members of the public now have until 25 July to respond.) Derek Hodge, Vice Chairman, then outlined the Parish Council’s draft response. This was, in brief, that whilst they supported the proposals in principle, they had reservations about several aspects of them. These included the small size of some of the dwellings, the lack of parking spaces, garages and storage and the absence of street lighting. They also intended to ask for clarification on the provision of a direct foot route to Shrewsbury St., who would be responsible for the maintenance of the amenity area and assurance that the affordable housing component would be allocated to local people in perpetuity.
It was then intended that the meeting should hear from all those who prior to 7.00pm had booked five minute slots in order to express their views. Instead the first speaker, Mr Rechten (Hodnet Action Group), asked that those around the table should first take questions. Initially Tony Barton responded with comments on the architectural brief for the development. He also apologised for not being able to stay until the end of the meeting.
Following this, the meeting did not take the intended course. Most of the speakers from the floor were opposed to the development in its current form. Just one person spoke in favour of the proposals and did so passionately. They felt the development was needed for securing the future of village businesses, etc. Those who objected had two main areas of concern. The first was that both the historical and recent “consultation procedures” had been flawed. There was some confusion over the status of the current “Site Allocations and Management of Development” (SAMDev) consultation and its relevance to the current planning application. There was also concern that a response by the Medical Centre had been misrepresented in the application. Dr Mehta explained that whilst they had a statutory duty to accept all residents in the area as patients, the estimated number of additional patients from the fifty new dwellings would put severe pressure on the practice. The Chairman said that these concerns were outside the scope of the meeting, but this was not universally accepted by a large section of those present.
The other main concern was the density of the proposed housing and whether it was appropriate for a rural village setting. Derek Hodge said this was the issue underlying all the Parish Council’s comments about parking spaces, garages and storage space as well as the size of some of the dwellings. Nevertheless strong opinions were expressed by many people to the effect that there were too many properties being squeezed onto the three pieces of land covered by the proposals. People had concerns over a number of issues arising from the density of the housing, one of the main ones being the increase in traffic levels.
Towards the end of the meeting Karen Calder, who had earlier done her best to try to explain the present position of the planning process, offered to arrange a meeting between interested parties and Shropshire CC planning officials. Those who could be invited to attend would include representatives of the landowners, the Parish Council and the Hodnet Action Group. She gave the impression that this might aim to explore whether it were possible to negotiate a reduction in the density of the estate.
It was pointed out that there was still time for members of the public to respond both to the planning application and the SAMDev consultation. However, both of these should be done within the next few days. See here for details of how to do so.
After the Chairman closed the public meeting, the Parish Council held an extraordinary meeting to finalise the Council’s response. When they had done this, Derek Hodge read the draft text to everyone including the members of the public who had stayed behind to hear it. In summary he said:
Hodnet Parish Council supports in principle the planning application. However the Council considers that the scale and density of the proposal is not appropriate for Hodnet. In addition they had the following concerns:
- That the 19, three bedroom houses are too small;
- The lack of garaging, parking and storage – 1.5 parking spaces is inadequate, regulations require sufficient storage for modern family requirements;
- It should be noted that the Medical Centre could not easily accommodate the extra patients;
- That there should be the provision of cabling for street lighting in the area and that any lighting should be the latest low wattage type and be directional to eliminate light pollution;
- There should be pavements on both sides of the access road;
- It should be determined in the planning approval how the amenity area should be maintained;
- The provision of affordable housing must be local priority and must be a condition of planning approval being granted.
