Ward Councillor Objection

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Ward Councillor Objection
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Project Case Study

Project: Gloucester Centre Redevelopment

Planning Objections via Ward Councillors

Dear Ward Councillors

• Thank you for your letter, for taking an interest in this application and for asking for our questions.
• We would like to add some points to your list to be raised at the Planning Committee.

First to reinforce your list:

The size of the development:

• There still appears to be no proposed Site plan submitted for the development, but there is a plan for protection of trees during demolition buried in a demolition report
• Therefore there can be no joined up thinking or joined up planning
• The site is our walk-to open space with mature trees, shrubs and wildlife, the proposed residential development over develops the site with no left over accessible public open space.
• There are SUDS ponds and bat barn indicated and wild flower meadow suggested in a report, no where for children’s play, other than amongst the on street parking or much further afield.
• We are opposed to 100 properties since this adds a minimum of 200 cars plus service vehicles and delivery couriers, through the surrounding residential streets
• The first road is Morpeth Close which is undersized for this number of cars, is used for on street parking and widening it will undermine the tree roots of a known bat flight path.

Impact on the existing infrastructure:

• A minimum of 200 additional cars leaving at morning rush hour will add to the existing congestion at Oundle Road and Shrewsbury Avenue.
• Local Doctors, Dentists and schools are all over subscribed

Felling of Trees:

• The roughly 100 No. 40 year old mature trees provide the backbone for a thriving biodiverse mix of bats, birds, insects and other flora and forna.
  They provide protection, home and food for many of the site’s wild life residents.
• 4 Lime trees are significant to supply food for the bat colonies that exist on the site)
• 4 Cherry/Plum trees and a Group of SilverBirch on the site are much loved and about to be removed to make way for SUDS ponds.
• An intelligent landscape architect can easily accommodate them in a scheme.
• These trees offer a wooded skyline at the perimeter of the surrounding estate which is almost devoid of trees (3 No. in total for over 500 properties), but for small trees in private gardens..
• These are not ’Nothing of significance’ as previously stated in the first outline planning proposal.
• There still appears to be no proposed Site plan submitted for the development, but there is a plan for protection of trees during demolition buried in a demolition report
• Therefore there can be no joined up thinking or joined up planning
• Saving trees during demolition may still be followed by felling of trees to suit a final housing layout.
• The informally tabled but not formally submitted site plan is submitted by the Government (Homes England) appointed design team, not the final site plan by the developer’s design team.
• This gives the developer the opportunity to replan the site and require the saved trees to be felled after all.
• We are not sure how Peterborough can claim to the Environment Capital and to have signed up to the Climate Emergency and continue to destroy perfectly sound trees and the biodiversity they support and the amenity they bring to Peterborough residents.

Impact on surrounding resident’s gardens

• Changing a single storey development to a two or more storey development will inevitable reduce the existing resident’s amenity by overlooking of gardens and homes.
• See comments on Social housing below

Road layout

• There has been an improvement from the first layouts which were race tracks to city engineering design and no place making and safe play areas.
• We were advised by the PCC T&CP officers, that the road hierarchy of the current assumed layout (informally submitted within the demolition report) was not permitted today.
• So what confidence do we have this will be the layout of the actual developers?

Car parking

• The Social Housing in two previous layouts were cramming 30% of the housing into 10-15% of the site, inevitably will go wrong.
• There are insufficient parking spaces for the social housing, the larger houses, non for visitors.
• On street parting is inevitable, HOHO Half on half off parking is inevitable, leaving no where for pedestrians, prams and cyclists

Social Housing

• There still appears to be no proposed Site plan submitted for the development, so the scale and location of the social housing is still not confirmed.
• The previous submitted scheme had a large block which needed to be 3 storey to accommodate 30 units.
• We do not know if the 5 new blocks are to be 2 or 3 storeys.
• Whilst residents have been against the high percentage of social housing, we understand that despite other schemes being let-off this site will not.
• The early site layouts generated some of the most anti-social social housing; the latest informal un-submitted site layout disperses the social housing, this may be a bit of social engineering that may backfire and make the area a less desirable place to live and an unsafe place for animal walking or recreation.

Additional Traffic

• We are opposed to 100 properties since this add a minimum of 200 cars plus service vehicles and delivery couriers, through the surrounding residential streets
• The first road is Morpeth Close which is undersized for this number of cars, is used for on street parking and widening it will undermine the tree roots of a known bat flight path.
• We currently have 6 rat runs through the surrounding housing estate, caused by congestion in morning rush hour, add another 200+ cars and the current 1 our journey to Orton Business Park is likely to become gridlock chaos.

Now issues not in your lists:
Biodiversity:

• Nearly 100 mature 40 year old trees provide a wild life infrastructure that enables many bats to have found ideal conditions and foraging to enable their occupation of existing buildings
• Numerous existing redundant buildings contain bat roosts, survey have identified where and which species but not recorded numbers so we do not know the scale of needs to be provided for.
• We do know that the Client’s agents knew of the bats, which species and planned to include a Bat Barn but claimed ’Nothing of significance’ present.
• The Government’s design team proposed to fix bat boxes to mature trees only to be reminded by the residents that they planned to cut them all down.
• One species of bat that is recorded in surveys to be present on the site requires a roof void to fly in, the
  • Bat Conservation Trust recommend a roost space 5 x 5 x 2.8 m.
  • The Planner’s advisor required 4 x 4 m
  • the Client’s Design team designed 3 x 3 x 1.5 m
  • this will mean the bat species in question will have to leave the area to find suitable roots.
• In order to fly in and out of the roosts entry points need to be 2m above the site but the proposal is 1.5 m above the floor and wild life meadow is planned surrounding the bat barn leaving not space to fly.
• The developer only has an obligation to monitor the roost occupied or empty, but no obligation to successfully migrate the bats to new homes.
• Any Provision of bat roots and bird boxes need to be in place and occupied (by their own choice not by forced decanting) of the efforts may be unsuccessful.
• Getting a licence to do something that is otherwise illegal does not make it right.

Future Proofing the development:

• Whilst this is only an outline planning application it runs the risk of dictating to some degree the developer’s final proposal.
• It has become clear to Future-facing building designers with competent energy performance design software
  • (Example Passivhaus PHPP)
  • that house orientation, is critical to future proofing housing.
• The Energy Hierarchy puts
  • ‘Fabric-first’ as the priority, make the building do most of the work, and
  • ‘Eco-bling’ last, making up for the shortfall that the building cannot provide on its own.
• Good window orientation and high window specification can reduce heating and cooling energy demands by 75% and more,
• For all new housing stock to be low-carbon in-use they must acknowledge window orientation.
• No amount of retrofitting eco-bling (Solar Thermal, Solar PV, Solar PVT, Wind Turbines) will solve poor window orientation, and these buildings will be reliant upon mains supply of gas or electricity for the life of the buildings, well beyond 2050 (Current carbon targets are set to 2050) but a 60 year ‘normal’ life takes them to 2080.
• Summer solar heat exclusion is easier with solar shaded south facing windows and very difficult with East and West facing glazing. Winter solar heat gains morning, midday and evening are beneficial.
• The site layout in the demolition report: if it were assumed to have any relevance to the planning application, puts the buildings at roughly 45 degrees to the midday sun.
• This makes them more difficult to control solar heat gains in the afternoon.
• Putting bedrooms at risk of overheating making night time sleep more difficult.
• Future proofing of buildings must be high on the agenda of Planning Applications, for buildings that should still be here well after 2080.
• If window orientation is not considered then roof orientation becomes critical to obtain a reasonable % of renewable energy from Eco-bling.
• Resident Oakleigh Drive

Other Comments:

• Peterborough CC making applications during lockdown periods and not giving additional time for responses.
• Many elderly people are not going out or have access to internet.
• It may be the legal statutory time frame, but we are not living in normal times.
• Residents wish to know why men in high vis jackets and hard hats were in at least one building 2 weeks ago, which has a known bat roost.
• Have they already obtained a licence?
• Resident

• As a local resident I’d just like to explain my concerns regarding the extra traffic 100 houses would create.
• If Wainman road isn’t suitable then there shouldn’t be 100-200 cars plus delivery vans etc funnelled through Morpeth close. The estate is already a rat run and there’s plenty of school children walking/biking through the area.
• I moved here to get away from heavy traffic.
• Thornleigh Drive, Sheringham and Royston Avenue are barely wide enough for two cars and the junctions on these roads are very tight.
• The school run to St Botolphs takes ages as it is because Oundle Road is gridlocked.
• The traffic coming down the Gordon Arms slip road are queueing back to Holiday Inn roundabout, that’s not very safe.
• The housing density along Oundle Road is now too much especially with the new houses and a Lidl shop and car parking being built at Sugar Way.
• Shrewsbury avenue can be extremely busy as.
• I have other concerns such as environmental, trees, bats but others have explained those well.
• Thanks for objecting.
• Resident, Oakleigh Drive

• All the concerns raised by previous residents are valid and extremely concerning.
• On a personal level I live at the first house on the left as vehicles turn from Morpeth Close into Oakleigh Drive
• I am extremely concerned how I am even going to be able to reverse off my drive!
• At the present time there are often many cars parked along my side of the road making it difficult at times but with another 200 plus cars added to this 24/7 it will become near impossible or at least dangerous.
• One access to the new estate is unbelievably ridiculous and I strongly object to Wainman Rd being closed & the amount of houses being constructed.

Outcome Pending

© GBE GBC GBL NGS ASWS Brian Murphy aka BrianSpecMan **
4th October 2019 – 14th December 2020

Ward Councillor Objection
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© GBE GBC GBL NGS ASWS Brian Murphy aka BrianSpecMan **
4th October 2019 – 14th December 2020

Ward Councillor Objection
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© GBE GBC GBL NGS ASWS Brian Murphy aka BrianSpecMan **
4th October 2019 – 14th December 2020

Ward Councillor Objection G#28967 End