I do like to happen.
Thank you.
Thank you, Tara.
[MUSIC]
Good evening everybody, and welcome to this district planning committee meeting held on Wednesday, the 24th of April 2024.
My name is Councillor Kevin Laggan, I am the current chairman of this committee.
Members, by stream of this meeting live as well as being recorded, and
by being present in the meeting, you're given your consent to be recorded.
During each item, please put your hand up to indicate if you wish to speak, or
then invite you at the appropriate time.
Please note that the YouTube live stream of sound recording is dependent on the correct use of microphones.
Therefore, can I ask you when you've invited to speak,
you remember to turn on your microphone and turn off when you're finished.
Please reference a page or a paragraph number when referring to agenda papers and
keep your contributions and clearance concise as possible.
Agenda item two, apologies for absence.
Tara, may I have apologies for absence, please?
Thank you, Chairman.
Apologies to receive some Councillor Bailwood, Councillor Dyer.
Councillor Jennings, Councillor Labor, Councillor Hawley, Councillor Schorley,
Councillor CIDL, Councillor CIDL Nohlman and Councillor Stevens.
Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, not so apologies, Councillor White.
Thank you, Chairman, I've also got apologies from Councillor Wifin.
Thank you, thank you very much, please get that Tara.
Councillor Wifin.
Yes, Chairman, I've got that, thank you.
That's lovely, thank you.
Agenda item three, it's the minutes of the last meeting which is found on your agenda
packs on page 7 to 14, and this is to confirm the meeting of the district planning
committee held on the 12th of March 2024.
Local copies and closes recommended that the minutes are approved as a true and
accurate record, I so moved to have a second to please.
Councillor Morgan, second.
Members, any comments or agree by a cent?
Agreed.
Agreed, thank you very much indeed.
Agenda item four, which is declarations of interest.
To disclose the existence and nature of any discloseable pecuniary interests,
other reasonable interests and non-registable interests relating to items of
business on the agenda, having regard to paragraph nine and appendix B of the code
of conduct for members.
Members are just reminded that you also required to disclose any such interest
as soon as you become aware should the need arise throughout the duration of the meeting.
Any declarations, please?
Councillor Neill.
Thank you, Chairman.
I've got a non-registable interest, obviously at item number five as I know the applicant.
Great, thank you very much indeed.
Any other member, please?
No, thank you very much indeed.
We now move to agenda item five, which is a gender item five reference two,
three slash zero, zero, eight, five, seven slash F-U-L-M.
This is land at Great Hayes Business Park, Lower Burn and Road Stomaris.
And it's found on pages 15 to 36 of your agenda packs.
We've got Mr. Marsh here, who's going to present the report remotely.
And we've got Derek Lawrence in the Chamber, as you can see.
We've also got one public participation, Mr. Simon Hollington,
who will be invited to speak after the presentation.
Thank you, Mr. Marsh.
Can I put it in here, okay?
You're not as loud as we'd like, to be honest.
Maybe you don't know, I can't really do much this end.
Is it possible to turn the speaker up a bit in your end?
Ben?
Yeah, just lean forward to him and yeah, as Wendy says, be like Wendy, that's it, yeah.
Thank you, you were a compliment.
Thank you, General.
You can see my, I'll leave a share of the screen, obviously.
Hopefully that's working okay.
Oh, that's perfect, thank you, yeah, much better.
Yeah, so yes, this is an application for the development of employment use on the site,
or part of the site, which is allocated in the local plan for mixed-use employment.
It's located, as you'll see from the aerial photograph here,
approximately two kilometers to the eastern to south of Ferris,
and a kilometer to the south of Stoneman's.
I've included this slide here, which is the extract from the local plan,
showing the extent of the site that's allocated in the local plan.
And the application includes approximately half of that site,
which includes existing buildings, most of which are being retained.
It has also included a couple of semi-detached houses,
which are proposed to be demolished, as explained in the report,
and also includes land to the south here for sustainable drainage.
So this is the proposed site plan and location plan.
So it's a bit of odd shape, but it's because it's including the access roads.
This is where most of the new buildings will be going on the north corner here,
with those are the existing costs used to be demolished.
And then the proposed locations for the buildings are,
there's a large building going in here, two buildings with the access road
and a warehouse building on the eastern side,
as you'll see from the site location plan,
for the proposed site plan in a moment.
Just before completeness, this is the elevations of four plans
for the existing costs used to be demolished, as I mentioned earlier.
And this is the proposed site plan for the new deployment,
which is a total of 2,995 square metres in the form of five separate buildings.
This building here on the corner, which sort of wraps its way around the corner,
off Lower Vernon Road, is for predominantly offices.
This building here is for industrial B8 warehouse use.
The building perpendicular to the road is another office building,
a large warehouse building on the rear of the site.
And then they proposed veterinary practice through the southern area here,
together with car parking.
The site also includes the, within the blue,
the remainder of the allocation, as explained in the report,
that's affected it with all the second phase through the development.
So we've got a series of illustrations here of the,
firstly, the street scene, as would appear, looking from Lower Vernon Road,
facing eastward, so there's the road frontage.
So that's the building I pointed out that wraps its way around the corner,
the slightly larger industrial building, and then the office building.
The building that's been retained, the existing building,
and then you'll see in some photographs bit later,
that's the older building that's on the southern part of the site.
This is the proposed veterinary clinic, which is located,
as I explained on this southern part of the site here.
There is an existing veterinary practice, which this will provide a new premises for.
The existing practice is located in the corner of that existing building here,
and is proposed, as I said, to provide a new facility for them.
This is the elevations for the larger of the two office buildings,
with a sort of distinctive shape, it is a single story with,
sort of a bellock-free flight.
The materials are a brookman with a grain, corrugated cloud elevations and roof,
which is considered to be appropriate given the commercial use
and the existing established character of the site.
This is the second small office building, again similar style,
and then the warehouse building's sort of conventional warehouse industrial sort of unit.
This is the larger of the two.
So some sort of road frontage use, the main road frontage from Lower Vernon Road
is the one I sort of talked to earlier on.
So if they've got two access points into the development,
that's the Northern access here between the existing building
and the proposed office building, which will replace the cottage's.
And then this is a view from the Northern arm, effectively of the Lower Vernon Road.
So you've got the Northern part of that office building,
which wrapped its way around the corner of the site to set behind trees.
There are a number of trees on the site, some of them,
which will be retained to provide that landscape buffer.
So I've got some photographs here onto the site as existing.
That's the larger existing building, like pointed out at the start,
it's going to be retained.
And there's some views within the site of the existing industrial buildings
as I mentioned, a pretty utilitarian as to be expected on a site like this.
And that's the older building that has been retained.
And then just on the corner, I think you see my mouse is where the existing veterinary practice is.
I hope you can hear me, so I just realized I've drifted away from the screen.
No, we can hear you, thank you.
Good, good.
So looking away from the site, this is on the road on the corner of Lower Vernon Road.
It wraps its way around for site, so that's the planting I referred to earlier.
That's one of the existing houses that is proposed to be demolished.
And you can see how it's set behind the existing hard-standing for the commercial site.
There's some views here looking out, which is from the site.
And then a number of photos taking on a very different day.
I think those are the houses again.
And you can see how they're very much within the context of the existing commercial premises.
So in terms of in summary, the site is a fully operational existing site.
And the proposal is to expand on that and make a positive contribution to the local plant's employment objectives.
And as I explained at the start, it is mostly allocated for employment development.
The only two areas that are not being the sustainable drainage and the costages,
that are explained are required to create the access for the development of the view to developing the second phase.
Whilst the development evolves, the loss of two ways are a low-architectural merit.
And the Council can demonstrate a five-year housing balance supply.
And you can't have a benefit of the scheme as explained or considered to outweigh that harm.
And demolishing the cottage allows for the access to be utilized ahead of the second phase, as I said.
And the applicant has confirmed that it would not be possible to bring forward a second phase within that current plan period to enhance the proposal to develop harm to the site.
Mission information has been provided to conclude that development is acceptable in terms of highway safety.
It doesn't raise any other kinds of multiple issues which can't be addressed by condition.
And therefore the application is about to be caused with the MPDF and flood plant policies and is recommended for conditional approval accordingly.
I suggest at the end to point out that there is reference in the transport section of the report to the need for a legal agreement to secure the travel plan contribution.
It was envisaged that the time report was written that that would be sign agreed, but there's been a delay which would mean it.
It's a committee resolved to approve the application as recommended.
There might be a slight delay in issuing the decision while studies finalised by the county council and the applicant.
So, that's on our control, but I've been chasing up today so hopefully it shouldn't be delayed by very long.
So, that's the recommendation. Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you very much indeed, Mr Marsh.
We have Mr. Hollington, the applicant, who's requested to speak publicly on the issue.
Mr Hollington, if you could make your way up to the horseshoe, please.
And Councillors, thank you very much indeed.
Thank you.
And you will see there's a clock that says three minutes and you've actually got two minutes.
I shouldn't take that long.
Okay, so when she starts speaking, the clock will start going down.
Thank you.
Mr Chairman, Councillors, ladies and gentlemen, I hope I don't repeat too much what Tim Marsh has said, but I have got a summary here.
Great Hears Business Park is a generic development of a former dairy farm.
I'm a fifth generation farmer and have slowly diversified the family business at this site for the last 20 years.
Farming is still the heart of the business.
We run a commercial flock of sheep on traditional grazing marshes, and we also grow grapes on the south-facing slopes of the Crouch Valley.
We're being asked to consider today is an extension of it.
Land of Great Hears was zoned for Employment Bimal District Council as part of the local development plan in 2017, and this application is a result of that.
The application does involve demolishing two agricultural workers' cartridges, and as Tim Marsh explained earlier, there are poor construction circa 1955 in need of significant modernization and do not add to the character of the immediate area.
We consider the economic benefits outweigh the harm considered by their removal.
God, I haven't got my glasses, I'm sorry.
And that led us to be able to hold the Council has met the five-year housing lands that fly.
The cartridges are no longer occupied by farm workers as the cow herd was sold in 2004.
Anyway, we feel this development offers significant benefits to the district in that it begins to deliver a significant proportion of mother's employment requirement.
It allows existing tenants on site to expand their businesses here rather than relocating outside the mother district.
Our main tenant is Wembal plastic, some of you might know, a manufacturer bespoke retail marketing equipment.
They employ up to 200 people most of the year and significantly more when they get busy.
The proposal, as was said earlier, is in accordance with the national planning policy framework and the up-to-date development plan.
Mr Arlington, that's it.
Anyway, thank you for that.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you, Councillor Stilps as well.
Thank you.
So, members, we actually have a recommendation to approve subject to a legal agreement pursuing intersection 106 and the planning obligations and conditions as detailed in section 8.
Is that seconded?
That is, Councillors White.
Seconded that, please.
Councillor White, your hand was up first for members to speak.
It was.
Thank you, Mr Chairman.
I would say that I do know the applicant because they are fellow farmers in the district.
And, you know, we may have a really tiny ward as the ward member, but actually we really pull our weight with employment.
That gives the benefits, the district on business rates, which help fund an awful lot of the facilities we need for our residents.
This is a site we get no complaints on. There's no problems with access.
And I wholeheartedly agree with the recommendation and I would propose that we accept the officer's recommendation.
And do I have a seconder, please?
So, that's already been seconded.
Yeah, was it?
You seconded it and then you spoke. So, that's called Councillor Fluka.
Yeah, thank you, Chairman.
I often think when we come to these LDB sites, we should, you know, it was a long time ago when we considered this and we should pay tribute to the likes of Councillor Cheshire and Councillor Channa, who came up with a basic strategy of where we should develop, and this was one of the sites.
And of course, the late Councillor John Archer, because it was very much his idea that we had these type of sites, you know, away from the wrong end of the danger, so the traffic was out of the district.
And I think it's a great tribute to their thinking where we are this evening.
You know, Mr. Huntington spoke about diversification.
I think anyone that's lived in the district for any length of time will remember when the milking herd was there and they used to shut the road, I think, twice a day.
Stop the traffic, so that's one bit of diversification, I agree with Chairman.
And the other point, and I know that Mr. Huntington's here, and I do know him all that I haven't seen for years, and I just hope he bears this in mind, because he said he grows grapes and his friend and farming cohort, Mr. Fisher grows grapes, and these are some of the biggest vineyards that are being built throughout this district.
And I just hope that Mr. Huntington, on this site, he might have the key to what we actually need, and that is a winery in the district, because my understanding is eventually most of the grapes will go out of the district, perhaps as far away as Kent to be processed.
And Chairman, I look forward to drinking Chateau Denji one day.
Thank you, Councillor Fluke. Any other member wish to speak on this application?
No?
So, the recommendation before it has been seconded. Members, do we agree by a cent?
Yes.
Thank you very much indeed.
The next item on the agenda is any items of business at the Chairperson of the Committee's Society, I've got about three hours worth.
So, I do have one thing. This is my last, as we know, my last Chair-in of this Committee.
And I just want to say thank you very much indeed for everybody who's given me the support, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
And when the next person comes in, with some great luck as well, and as much enjoyment as I've had.
Well, I'm not going to stand for it anyway, Councillor Stem.
So, no, one won't stand for it.
So, with that being the close, exactly the quickest meeting I've ever done.
At 7.47 jumbo jet time, I declare the meeting closed.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
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Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
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Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
