Plans are slammed (From Stroud News and Journal)

Plans are slammed

REVISED plans for 62 new homes on the outskirts of Stroud have received another furious broadside from town leaders.

Initial proposals for 75 homes on the former Lansdown Kennels site prompted more than a dozen objections from Stroud Town Council earlier this year and were later withdrawn.

But despite lowering the number of houses and changing the layout, developers Woodchester Commercial Investments have still attracted the wrath of councillors.

At a meeting of the planning applications committee on Monday, April 25, members vowed to fight the application and urged Stroud residents to do the same.

"This is just cramming as many houses on as they can get," said committee chairman Andy Read. "I am not going to suggest a number - it is up to them to come back with something acceptable.

"They are all town houses. This is on the edge of the town, not a town centre site."

Cllr John Marjoram added: "The number is still too high. We do not want excessive housing."

Cllr Read said residents who objected to the first application had to know there was a new proposal on the table so they could comment again.

"Everybody's original objections will not count," he said. "We should make sure that people at least know there is a new application in."

The draft version of district planning bible the Local Plan only allows for 60 homes on the entire site, including the 45 homes agreed on the adjacent Express Dairies plot.

With these 62 houses the total would come up to 107 - nearly twice the amount recommended in the Local Plan.

Gerald Walsh of Woodchester Commercial Investments said: "People in Stroud just do not realise they have to give something in order to retain what they have got.

"There are only a certain of places within the Stroud urban boundary that can be buuilt on that do not encroach on green field site and this site is part of one housing allocation."

Anyone who wishes to comment on the application should write to the planning department at Ebley Mill by Thursday, May 19.