Transcript

within the same opening hours as the existing pub. Whilst there have been no objections from statutory consultees, this application is on tonight's agenda due to the number of objections from members of the public to the scheme. On to the next slide. The application site is located on a prominent corner within the historic core of the Gruby Conservation Area and comprises the Stanford Arms, which is a grade two listed public house. The new, the new Delhi and coffee area takes place in the eastern corner of the site within their existing external kitchen and public house and just referenced that closest to the adjacent dwelling on the right hand side. And to see that clearer, we can see that in the next slide which show the existing and the proposed floor plans. Whilst the scheme only increases the overall footprint of the Stanford Arms by 29 square metres, the proposal increases the publicly available floor space within the property from 227 square metres to 354 square metres. And also within this proposal, the existing coal store is replaced and relocated to the northern side of the property, but to the south of the beer garden, as we can just see on the left hand side. But this is still within the compound of the site and the environmental health officer has no objections to this relocation. On to the next slide, as we see on the existing and proposed elevations, the existing storage building, external kitchen and the associated compound where the development is going to take place, are considered to be of limited heritage significance to the Stanford Arms. Moreover, the scheme does not extend beyond the existing building lines of the side and rear elevations of the heritage asset. Therefore, given the sighting, the moderate size and the scale of the development, as well as the presence of the existing car park, the development is not considered to have a prominent presence within the street scene of the conservation area. And ultimately it is considered that the proposal preserves the character and significance of the heritage asset and the group of conservation area. If we just move on to the next slide, we'll see an aerial map of the site again. Several members of the public, including Groobie Parish Council, have raised concerns regarding highway safety and insufficient off-street parking. But just for clarity, there are no amendments made within this development against the existing vehicular access points, nor the existing parking provision for the site, which we can see on this aerial map, there is one adjacent to the site and one just across the road for parking. Whilst the local highway authority identified that, typically they would require three additional off-street vehicle parking spaces for use of this size. And they do not have any objections to the scheme. And this is because the application site is within the centre of Groobie and is within 800 metres walk of the majority of the village. And the surrounding road network is covered by a comprehensive package of traffic regulation orders. As highlighted within the late items report, the applicant is also intending to source parking management solutions, such as automatic number plate recognition systems to prevent non-clients of the public house utilizing their car park. However, it is known that the main objections to this development is regarding detrimental impacts of the development on the financial viability of Groobie Community Library and Cafe. As per paragraph 5.3 of the committee report, whilst the local planning authority appreciates the circumstances of the Groobie Community Library and Cafe, the local planning authority are not able to demonstrate that this minor expansion of an existing public house that already serves food and coffee will result in any detrimental impacts to the library and its cafe. Furthermore, Groobie's ex-servicemen social club, as we can see on the aerial map, which is opposite the library, currently offers hot food and drinks and similar products can also be purchased at the cooperative, which is just opposite the Stanford arms. Ultimately, local and national policy states that significant weight should be placed on the need to support the economic growth and productivity, taken into account both local businesses such as the Stanford arms and wider opportunities for development. In light of the scheme's ability to preserve the character and significance of the listed building, the conservation area, is ability to protect neighbouring residential immunity and its lack of significant harm on highway safety nor the road network, the application is recommended for approval. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

• Thank you very much, Sullivan. We'll now debate the item, both items and also to move and second it, Council Allen.
• Thank you very much, Chair. I'll keep your comments on this one short. It seems like quite a reasonable scheme to help protect the viability of a pub, which we see far too many disappearing from our towns and villages. I'm more than happy to move the officers or recommendations. - Thank you. Are you moving on both items?
• On both items, yes, Chair. - Thank you. Do you have a seconder?
• Councillor Cook, thank you very much indeed. Are there any further speakers? No? So we'll take item 10 first. So if you, we have a motion to approve item 10, as per the officer's recommendation, moved by Councillor Allen and seconded by Councillor Cook, please raise your hand if you are voting for the motion. (mellow music)
• Thank you, against abstention. One, the motion then on item 10 is approved and a, we now go on to item 11, which is the list of building consent. Again, proposed by Councillor Allen and seconded by Councillor Cook. Please raise your hand if you are voting for the list of building consent and keep it raised until Becky's counter. Thank you, against abstentions. One, therefore the motion for list of building consent is approved. Thank you very much indeed. We now move on to, where's it gone? Item 13 on page 79, application 23/00432/OT, land north of the A47 Normandy Way and east of Stoke Road, Hinckley. Can I ask Chris, please, to present the report?
• Thank you, Madam Chairman. Yes, this final item this evening, 23/0.
• One, two, five, yeah. 432/ot, land north of the A47 Normandy Way, east of Stoke Road, Hinckley. The proposal is to outline planning application for the erection of up to 475 dwellings, including public open space, drainage landscaping, and associated infrastructure. Before I move on to the slides, the key thing to point out as part of this application is the same size and same number of dwellings already has permission to the previous application, which was referenced 22, of course, I still do a 318 to 4/0 out, which was allowed on appeal earlier this year in January. There is one difference which I will come to as part of the slides. So in terms of where the site is located, you can see there, so for reference, you can see Normandy Way running east to west across the slide, Stoke Road running off to the northwest. And then the Morrison's car park is just located to the south of the island there in the center of your, well, just the south of the center of your slide. Moving on to the site location plan, and this probably shows it best together with the next master plan slide. So the difference between this application and the previous application is outlined on, in paragraph or other 2.5 of your report, which is on page 106 of the report. And effectively, the difference between the two applications is because with this application, the consultation response received from the County Council planning obligations team has confirmed that land initially reserved for primary school on the site is no longer required. And in light of this, a new red line plan and amended plan to document submitted to this current application, which removes the school site previously shown as part of previous application from the illustrative master plan as part of this application. So effectively, you can see there. So the reason this application is back in, it's been submitted is the removal of what was effectively land reserved for the school, which is within this area here. So forms a gap, if you like, within the red line that wasn't there as part of previous application. members also note that the blue line as part of this plan, and that's currently an application that's pending early stages of that application, but that's a further application for dwellings that's currently pending consideration. So moving on to illustrative master plan. And again, you can clearly see here, the what was land that was allocated for a school is now not included within the red line for this application. Otherwise, the layout in terms of public open space, number of dwellings effectively, and access which I'll come on to further, all remains the same as permitted. So in terms of the access, I discussed with a flick back to the master plan, you can see access is proposed off a new roundabout on Stoke Road, moving to further details. There's the detail description layout of that roundabout. That's the site access layout. So that's the sweat pattern analysis of showing the vehicle movements around the roundabout. And then further, so this is a offsite improvement. So we've now jumped further west of Henkley. This is Dodwell's Island on the A5. And as you can see, members weren't able to make out, particularly on this sort of scale, but effectively there's an improvement proposed to the carriage way to the A47 arm coming into Dodwell's Island with a difference in proposed and existing shown in the top of the screen. I'd also point out as part of this application, we do have outstanding consultation requests and national highways and active travel. Effectively, there haven't been resolved as yet. Normally at this stage, we wouldn't bring the application to plan the committee for determination until those two items were resolved. However, the difference being with this application, there has already got approval for the same number of dwellings on the same site. And should members permit the application this evening, we would put them on notice. However, the decision wouldn't be issued this evening, we would still have to go through the 6106 process before when the decision would be issued. In addition to further improvements proposed, now shown on the screen and probably better shown, then in the next slide is a new footway proposed to effectively link Tinkley all the way up to Stoke Golding. So you can see that effectively the top left of the left-hand part of your slide there is the very edge of Stoke Golding and proposes a two-meter footway all the way along to link to the new island to north of Tinkley. And again, comes back to the master plan there. I just jumped to the last one then, so in terms of land use and public open space typologies on the site to conclude, given the extended existing permission on the site for the same number of dwellings on the same red line site with the exclusion of the land for the primary school, together with the substantial benefits the application proposes which are identified in your report from paragraph 8.82 onwards, the application is there for recommended for approval. Thank you.
• Thank you very much, Chris. Councillor Bray.
• Yes, Chair, this is not a million miles from where I live, so I've traveled down these roads most of days, so I know the site incredibly well. Again, the principle of development on this site has been established effectively on at appeal, so we've got nowhere to go in terms of a refusal on this, and it is probably one of the less controversial sites we've had in terms of numbers of objections for housing the scale of this size, but it does really concern to me going forward. This is one of a number of applications we know that are either in or in the pipeline in this area, and it does really concern to me that what the impactless will have on both the, on the perimeter road, the Normandy Way, and also down onto the A5, and I think that we need to put in some serious chats with both Highways England and the County Council on what happens to those roads going forward in the future, because we're going to potentially put in another, what, 900 cars plus on the road from this development, probably the same again from the next one up if that gets approved, probably even more from the one on the next one, the next one up if that gets approved, and at some point it's all going to come to a standstill, and we know it, and we've all said it, and those who seem to be in charge of our roads seem to be sitting there with their fingers in their ears, and that really does worry me going forward.
• Thank you.
• So I've got no option to move the application because we've already got the principal to be established, but I do want to make those concerns very clear.
• Thank you, Councillor Bray, Councillor ALLAN.
• Thank you very much, Chair. And I'd just like to start off with a question for officers, please. So the area that the primary school was supposed to be on that's now outside the red line. And we'll see the approximate acreage of that, please, Chris.
• Good question, Councillor ALLAN. I will try and find it in the report effectively in the previous application it was identified as land available for a two to four-mentory primary schools if it had sort of aligned down the middle of it as well that sort of showed it could come forward in two stages, one for entry, then two for entry. In terms of the exact acreage, we're frantically looking to report to my right if we can find an answer, we'll come back to you, but I'm afraid I don't know.
• Well, I'll give it easy to say in the motion. (laughing)
• Thank you. Councillor Givens.
• Yeah, thanks. Like Councillor Bray, I also live off the perimeter road here. And if I go to Morrison's, I can't turn right. If I go to McDonald's, I can't turn right. I've got to go all the way down to that roundabout and back up to go back up to Ashby Road to the lights. Now, if I do that at the wrong time of day, I'm adding an extra 15 to 20 minutes on a journey that's less than a mile. Now, you could say, why aren't you walking it? But when you've got three bags of shopping, you don't really want to be walking it. So I think, following up from what Councillor Bray said with high ways of looking at this and county looking at this, you look at it now at four o'clock, five o'clock and you hear it on the radio as well, that traffic is backed. Not only all the way down to Morrison's roundabout, it's practically backed and wyking at some stages. So I strongly recommend that while you're in that position, we can't do much about this. Please, please consider the traffic and do so quickly. Thank you.
• Thank you, Councillor Givens. Chris, could I ask if it is possible to set up a meeting to discuss this with highways and highways in good, please?
• Thank you, Madam Chairman. Do you mean with regards to this specific application or just generally in general? Yes, well, first of all, definitely that is something we can see to set up with members. And secondly, I can say from an officer level, those meetings are already taking place. There's a series of meetings with regards to the A5 corridor that I attend one of them, officers from the planning policy team attend another separate meeting to the A5 and Bill as chief executive attends another meeting with regards to the A5. So with regards to the developments on the A5 corridor, there's several officer level meetings that take place. With regards to the county council, again, there's various levels of meetings that take place with regards to strategic site delivery, particularly for highways as well. But if that's to be recorded in the minutes, the members would like a meeting to discuss development around this area with national highways and county council. I am happy to take that forward.
• Thank you very much.
• Thank you. One more.
• Thank you. I mean, I'm worried about all sorts of things related to these developments. We've got 475 units here. When the polo mint is filled in, we'll probably have another 100 on top of that. So we've then got the site next door, which will be several hundred more. Then we've got sites possibly on coming in around Wiking. I mean, where does it all end? And it's not the case that we can simply say, well, let's build a dual carriage way because A, there's not the money there. And B, there's not space. There's not the physical space to do it. So I just can't see how any level of mitigation is going to solve the problem. We all know, we'll talk to anyone in Hinkley, particularly on the Western and Northern sides of Hinkley. They know this one of the most fundamental problems in town is getting choked. And one thing I can guarantee, people don't go into towns that are choked. They don't drive into towns that are choked. They don't spend money in towns that are choked. They don't want to locate businesses in towns that are choked. Infrastructure is absolutely essential. The easier road access is to park is absolutely essential for any successful town. And by going down this route of proving these ongoing developments, we are strung in our own town. Let's be absolutely clear about what we're doing here. And we've got to find some way out of this. We've only got to have a radical rethink about the trajectory of developments around the perimeter road, or we've got to have some really hard conversations about really serious road improvements and make sure that we talk to that. I was England and Propert authorities to get a deal done before these start coming on stream. Because otherwise, we'll be blamed. We're the people who are going to carry the can for this. It's not people in Westwind, it's not people in White, or it's not even their own offices, it'll be us, as Councillors. We're responsible for what we're doing. We operate within constraints, but we are ultimately responsible for decisions that we take. And we've got to make sure that we get the best deal for our people to make sure that we don't get overwhelmed. We don't strung their own town through excessive development. So this is one of those plans that has effectively already gone through with that. We've all been forced to on appeal. So maybe we can't do anything about it, but I'm extremely unhappy about the scale of this development. Now, extremely unhappy about the direction of developments around the town as it is at the moment.
• Thank you, Councillor Moore. We've had a motion to approve the item, must per the officer's recommendation, moved by Councillor BRIAN, seconded by Councillor ALLAN, with the addition of setting up meetings with highways, England, et cetera. Please raise your hand if you are voting for the motion and keep your hand raised until Becky has counted. Again, that is unanimous and therefore, sorry?
• Abstain.
• Oh, one abstention, sorry. Therefore, the application is approved. Thank you very much. We now move on to item 13, appeals progress. Would Chris please like to provide a verbal upgrade?
• Thank you, Madam Chairman. There wasn't an appeals report as part of this agenda. However, I'm happy to take any questions from members with regards to any outstanding appeals. Thank you.
• Are there any questions? No?
• Thank you. That concludes our business for tonight and I declare the meeting closed at 850. Thank you very much for your attendance.
• Nobody wants to go.