Outrage over housing plan (From Stroud News and Journal)

Outrage over housing plan

FURY has erupted in Brimscombe at plans to build 48 homes on green fields just yards from what residents say is a far more suitable plot.

Worried neighbours say proposed houses at Hill Farm on Bourne Lane would lead to traffic chaos, danger to schoolchildren and a permanent blight on picturesque countryside.

And they claim the housing site, earmarked by a government inspector, would be better placed in protected industrial land at Brimscombe Port, just 100 metres away. "This proposal is bonkers," said Thrupp's Green district councillor Martin Whiteside.

"It is an example of the planning system serving the bureaucracy rather than the needs of real people and real communities.

"We welcome 48 houses in Brimscombe but as part of a sensible mixed regeneration of Brimscombe Port and the canal.

"Stroud District Council just need to have the guts to stick up for what is right."

Almost 150 residents and councillors resolved to fight against the development at a packed public meeting in Brimscombe and Thrupp Social Club on Wednesday, February 23.

Ebley Mill planning officers explained to the assembled residents that the land was flagged up for development in the draft local plan in November 2004.

This site was not chosen by council officials but by an independent government inspector who can only be overruled with a second planning inquiry or potentially costly legal challenge.

Thrupp parish council clerk Robin Hunt said he felt "totally betrayed" by the inspector's decision, which seemed to ignore the parish council's recommendations.

"What we have heard here tonight, with all its intricacies, says everything about the process nowhere in there does it say anything about people," he said.

One local mum added: "We have to jump out of the way of cars already. This is the wrong place and anybody in their right mind can see it is absolutely ludicrous."

Residents intend to lobby the district council's cabinet before they discuss the plans on Thursday, March 10.

But planning consultant Ron Harrison, who spoke for the site's owners during the inspector's inquiry, warned that snubbing the inspector's ideas was a risky business.

"Unless there are some new issues which the inspector has not thought of then the district council would find it very difficult to reject his findings," he said.

*Stroud MP David Drew has recently signed an Early Day Motion calling on the government to ensure its house-building programme does not destroy the countryside.