 Okay Chair you are now live. Thank you. Good morning everybody and welcome to South Cams District Council Planning Committee. I'm John Bachelor and I'm Chair of the committee. My Vice-Chair Councillor Haylings is not with us today so I've asked Councillor Thane to act as Vice-Chair for this meeting. So members can I put it to you that you do you agree that this appointment is made by affirmation? Agreed. Anyone against? No, no one against good. Okay so Councillor Thane that will take the role of Vice-Chair. Councillor Thane would you just confirm that you're with us? Councillor Peter Thane, Shelford Ward here and happy to act as Vice-Chair. Lovely, thank you very much. We're supported along the top table by the following officers. There's Chris Carter who's delivery manager strategic science. Yes, we do introduce ourselves. Thank you Chair. Good morning everybody. Next is Stephen Reed the senior planning lawyer. Are you with us? Good morning Chair. Thank you and Ian Senior from Democratic Services who will be taking the minutes. Are you with us Mr Senior? Thank you very much. I would introduce individual case officers when I invite them to speak. So just a few housekeeping announcements. Please make sure that your device is fully charged and switch your cameras and microphones off unless you're invited to do otherwise. When you're invited to address the meeting please make sure that your microphone is switched on. When you finish addressing the meeting please turn off your microphone immediately and your camera. Speak slowly and clearly and please do not talk over or interrupt anyone. Please ensure that you have switched off or silenced any other devices you have so that they do not interrupt proceedings. The non-procedure planning committee is to take recorded votes and we will continue with this tradition unless there is a clear affirmation. When we move to a vote on any item and there is not clear affirmation, I will ask for a roll call to be taken. I will then ask committee members to speak into the microphone so that their votes is clear both to committee and to those watching the webcast. Members should respond for against or abstain when their name is called. Committee members present. I will now invite each of you to introduce yourself. Members after I call your name please turn on your camera and microphone. Wait two seconds and say your name and the word you represent so that your presence may be noted. Please remember to turn off your camera and your microphone after your introductions. So I'm John Bachelor, I'm committee chairman and I'm the member for Councilor Binton. Councillor Bradman please. Good morning. I'm Councillor Bradman from Milton and Water Beach Ward. Thank you. Councillor Cahn. Hello I'm Councillor Cahn. I'm the member for Houston, Inkington and Orchard Park. Thank you. Councillor Dornton. I understand you are substituting for Councillor Halings. I am. Yes thank you. Councillor Clair Dornton, Fenderton and Fulbourne Ward. Right. Councillor Peter Fein please. Peter Fein, Shelford Ward. Thank you. Councillor Dr Hawkins. To me Hawkins, Coleycott Ward. Thank you. Councillor Ripeth. Judith Ripeth, Milton and Water Beach. Good morning. Thank you. Councillor Roberts. But my camera work turn on Chairman. Deborah Roberts, District Councilor for Foxton Ward. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Heather Williams. Heather Williams, I represent the Mordens Ward. Thank you. Councillor Richard Williams. Thank you Chair. I'm Richard Williams. I'm the member for the Wittlesford Ward. Thank you. And Councillor Wright. Councillor Nick Wright, Member for Caxton and Patworth. Thank you very much. So I can confirm that the meeting is quiet. If at any time members leave the meeting, would they please make that fact known to me so that it can be recorded in the minutes? So members of the public are aware if a councillor is absent for any part of the presentation of or debate about an agenda item then they may not vote on that item. That includes technical issues I'm afraid. We have several public speakers today and I would just like to explain how public speaking will work. This meeting is being broadcast live via the council's website and public speakers are reminded that they are participating in this meeting. You are consenting to being broadcast into the use of the images and sound recordings for webcasts and training purposes. You will each have three minutes to address the committee. When you start speaking we will start the timer. Please ensure you switch the microphone on before you speak. When your time has elapsed we will ask you to conclude your speech. Once you have finished speaking we may wish to ask you questions. Please be concise in your response. If there are no more questions you may leave the meeting and continue to watch via the webcast. Committee members are reminded that any questions to speakers should be for clarification purposes only and the process for this shall be as follows. I will ask if there are any questions. If you do have questions please ask to speak via the chat function. The committee can only consider planning reasons for or against the application. The committee cannot consider general observations about the development site. The committee cannot consider comments from public speakers made outside of their allotted speaking time. Therefore request that those registered do not interrupt outside of their speaking time. Once the committee has heard from all speakers and planning officers we will form views on the application. The planning committee will then vote. The outcome is decided by majority vote and in the event of a time I as chair have casting votes. When planning committee members vote please can they ensure that they identify themselves and speak into the microphone so that the vote is understood by committee and those watching the webcast. Members are reminded that they identify whether they are for against or abstain when their name is called. Now move on to item two which is the apologies. Mr. Senior are there any apologies please? I just had one apology from Councillor Pippa Halings and her substitute is councillor Claire Daunton. Thank you very much. We then move on to item three which is declarations of interest. Do any members have interest to declare in relation to any item of business on this agenda? If an interest subsequently becomes apparent later in the meeting please would you raise it at that point. Categories of interest are listed on your agenda. Do we have any declarations of interest? Yes chair I've got one. Right that's Richard Williams. Yeah a non-pecuniary interest in item seven. I'm the ward member for Whittlesford. I'm also a member of Whittlesford Parish Council so obviously this application has come up in that context or in those contexts but obviously I will be considering the matter afresh today. Thank you very much. Councillor Thane do you have any others? Chairman it's myself. Heather Williams. Heather Williams wanted to speak chair. Okay thank you chairman just a non-pecuniary interest. I'm the local member for one of the enforcement reports on Arrington which I request and obviously have been involved in it but as it's not a decision making report I think it's not you know not something of consequence just for the record. Thank you very much and was there another one Councillor? Martin Kahn please. Yes I'm the local member for Orchard Park and I have been in meetings where it's been discussed with the Parish Council but I'm approaching the matter afresh. Thank you very much for that. Is that everybody? All right thank you. We therefore move on then to item four. Is now joining. So we're moving on to item four which are the minutes of three meetings. They are on the 27th of July 26th of August and the 9th of September. I take those separately so if I could go to page one item four. So these are the minutes for Wednesday the 27th of July 2020. Are there any issues of accuracy please? Nope. So can I take it that I can sign these minutes as a true record of that meeting? Anyone against that? No we're all happy with that are we? There is some background noise on the line could everybody who is online please make sure that their microphone is muted thank you. We move on to the next set of minutes which is the minutes for Wednesday the 26th of August 2020. Any issues of accuracy on these minutes please? Yes chair. Yes councillor. I am recorded as having abstained in relation to item five on page seven I actually voted against. Right okay I'm sure that will be noted then thank you. Any other points of accuracy on these minutes? No in that case. Chairman just to say as I was about to present at the meeting I can't comment the accuracy and therefore we'll be abstaining. Right thank you very much that is no problem. It's councillor Rippith here the same for me I wasn't present so I'll be abstaining. Thank you very much okay with with those provisos can I sign these as a true record of this meeting? Does anyone against that? No okay so the minutes of the 26th are agreed. We move on to the third set of minutes which are for Wednesday the 9th of September 2020. Any matters of accuracy on these please? Yes chairman councillor Bradnam. Yes please. Thank you chairman just a really minor thing on item seven which was Cotnam on page 16 of our agenda pack sort of in the last full line of the paragraph there it said the motion had been approved and I'm sure it's supposed to say the motion had been approved with an H. Yeah okay thank you very much for that. Anything else members? No are you there happy that I sign these as a true record of that meeting? Agreed. Agreed. No one against? No good okay so we have agreed those minutes and we move on to the substance of today's meeting. We're now on agenda five that's on page 19 of your agenda papers. This is application S4207 stroke 19 RM reserve matters that's for land east of Rempton Road of Cotnam. The proposal is for approval of matters reserved for appearance, landscaping, layout and scale following outline planning permission S2876 stroke 16 stroke OLL for a residential now joining comprising 154 dwellings including access. The applicant is the company this land the key material considerations will be outlined by the presenting officer. This is a departure and the application is brought to committee because the officer recommendation of approval conflict with the recommendation in the Kotlin parish council. So today the officer recommendation is approval the presenting officer is Michael Sexton. Mr. Sexton would you do your presentation please? Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Just one quick point of clarification before I begin the presentation on the website where the committee agenda is published. The document that's published is appendix two Kotlin parish council comments in brackets August 2020 should say appendix two Kotlin parish council in brackets September 20. When you open the document you do get the document you're supposed to it's purely the name of the document that is incorrect and in conversations with Ian if we were to fix that we would have had to take the entire committee agenda down. So the document itself is fine it's just so it's on record there is a typo in that. Thank you I'm sure that's noted. Thank you. Chair if you could confirm you can see a presentation on the screen please. I can. Excellent yes so this is a reserved matters application for appearance landscaping and layout and scale following an outline plan commission for residential development comprising 154 dwellings into the access at lands northeast of Brampton road Kotlin. Very important to start off with the fact that Kotlin has a neighborhood plan. The neighborhood plan was due to proceed to referendum on the 26th of March 2020 because of the Covid 19 pandemic the referendum was suspended and government guidance is that no more no neighborhood plan referendums can take place before May 2021 but national planning policy guidance practice guidance paragraph 107 has been released in response to the Covid pandemic does make it clear that where a local planning authority is issued is the decision statement detailing its intention to send the neighborhood plan to referendum which is the case for Kotlin neighborhood plan then significant weights in decision making can be given to that neighborhood plan as far as it is material to the application so on this application significant weight is given to the Kotlin neighborhood plan. Within the neighborhood plan there are a range of policies the particular ones that are relevant to this application assets out in the report and on the slide in front of you are landscape character heritage assets heritage character local green space development framework large site design recreation sports hub and sports facilities. Also important to know that Kotlin has a village design statement sbd adopted in 2007 the neighborhood plan draws heavily on that village design statement and the policies and guidance within that document and says in paragraph 1.5 that the design principles and some Kotlin specific policies have been retained or adapted within the neighborhood plan from the village design statements they very much work hand in hand both given significant weight for the application. So this is the application site for context we're on the sort of western edge of Kotlin heading out to to Rampton site outlined in red as a bit of background so outline planning application for a hundred digital dwellings including access was allowed as appeal on the 10th of May 2018. As part of that outline commission there were three conditions which are relevant to the reserve matters application in the reserve mass application needed to be supported by a precautionary working methodology for protected species that has been submitted and found acceptable by the ecology officer as part of the application condition six required details of housing mix which has been supplied and has been found to record with top policy and that's in the event condition seven in the event that any residential development was to be provided on land that's currently laid out as sports as playing pitches the proposal would be required to provide a equivalent area within the development sites but as will come on to the applicative residential element of the development does not encroach on to existing recreation land so condition seven is not triggered. Very briefly to highlight to members there are a lot of details reserved by condition on the outline consent 24 pre-commencement conditions in total which include sort of standard traffic management plan drainage conditions contamination conditions it also reserves details of boundary treatment and hard and soft landscaping although elements of that have been provided in support of reserve matters application. So since the outline application was granted there has been a non-material amendment application made to the outline application to add the words up to into the description that is more common that an outline plan permission seeks up to a certain number of dwellings whereas the original one actually said comprising 54 dwellings so this non-material amendment was approved and it does give flexibility as will come on to that you can go up to 154 dwellings. The reserve matters application as amended actually sees consent for 147 dwellings but it does fall within the established principle of the development of the site. Part of the reason why it seeks a slightly reduced number of residential properties is because the red line boundary for the reserve matters application is approximately two hectares smaller than the outlined red line boundary. This is best illustrated from this extract from the design and access statement. It details in paragraph 2.4 that Cambridge County Council decided to retain some of the land to be used for future school expansion. The Cotton and Primary School is here. Appreciate it's not particularly well shown clear on the map so the county has not given the original applicants have not put forward all the land to school at the outline stage as part of the reserve matters application. So the area in blue was part of the outline application it is not part of the reserve matters application. Just for a brief context of the area an aerial photograph within the red line boundary of the application you have this area here of Les King wood which is obviously a wooded area it is designated as a local green space within the Cotton Labourhood plan. You have the recreation existing recreation space here and then open land forming the rest of the site. Very briefly just in context running members who have not had the benefit of visiting the site. The site is relatively flat although the land does slope down as you go north towards Les King wood. So these photos are looking across the existing development on Robinson Road across the existing recreation ground again existing recreation ground and then view from the recreation ground towards Les King wood. Again just walking through Les King wood there are some informal footways. This is standing on the edge of Les King wood so you get the impression here that land does slope down as you go north on the site and then just walking back along Robinson Road here you can see ground levels falling and just another view across the site. So this is the site plan for the reserve matters application. 147 dwellings are proposed 88 of which are market properties 59 of which are affordable properties which is the 40%. Requirements. It's a very spacious layout it's approximately 17 dwellings per hectare when you look at the developer area of the site. You'll note that there's no development or encroachment into Les King wood and in very much in response to the neighbour plan policy there's a lot of permeability into Les King wood to better enhance that area of public space which is obviously currently present in the village but it's somewhat detached from the existing residential development so this scheme does look to respond positively to how it relates to Les King wood. All of the properties along the northern boundary of the site front on to Les King wood as well right so you don't have any sort of harsh boundary treatments as the rear of properties so positive design response in that respect. These are just some slightly more zoomed in versions of the master plan so you can see a bit more context. There's obviously a small section of dwellings here which sit against the existing properties along Rempton road should say all of the properties meets or exceed residential space standards apart from about half a dozen. The only reason they don't comply is because they're lacking slightly in internal storage space. It's not a policy requirement secured at outline stage so these properties don't have to comply with space standards but they do really on the whole and also the amount of garden space is very generous as you can see on these sites each property has a very generous amount of means to space that would meet or exceed the level set out by the council's district design guide and the back-to-back distances would also meet or exceed the council's finish design guidance so for the future occupiers very generous development has been put forward and again here you can just see the relationship with lesking wood and the additional permeability into the wood which is a positive design response. I'm sure we'll come to this within the debate so I don't want to touch on it too much now but there are 10 house types proposed across the development they are spread across the development and again that's a positive design response to the neighborhood plan seeking to have variation in design and architecture so you don't have repetitive rows of dwellings and where you do get perhaps five dwellings of the same type in one row there's an adjustment to the material palette which is again responding to the design the neighborhood plan in terms of not having that repetition. There are affordable houses obviously within the site they are distributed well throughout the site in clusters of sort of four to 12 which is broad in line with the policy adopted excuse me affordable housing SPD it is supported by our affordable housing team and they are obviously an integral part of the site finished to the same design and architectural standards so we are supportive of how the tenured types and of the layout of affordable housing has been provided. In terms of scale and appearance everything is sort of two story properties and some of the properties are relatively tall they do range from 8.5 meters to about 10.1 meters in ridge height the reason for that slightly higher ridge than the existing development long round-to-road is again the development is picked up on the cotton and finish design statement which states that there are sort of steeply pitched rooms is is parts a design feature within the village so the properties don't tend to have residential accommodation in the roof space they do have steep rich pitched roofs in response to the design statement so that's why they are slightly taller but they are two story properties. Here you can see on the street scene four which is the looking across the field towards the four of the road behind Rampton Road where you do have these five properties at the same they have changed the material and again that's responsive to the neighborhood plan requirements they just give you an idea of the scale and the subtle variations as well in terms of the scale of each house type as well just to provide further variations in design terms. These are just an example floor plans which you would have seen in the drawings pack that was circulated have really touched on it but they do all meet what you see national space standards except for half a dozen where they're slightly lacking on internal storage space and again it's just great to show the the scale and the variation in design across the house type so I won't go through all 10 as part of this presentation but just to give members a feel for the very architectural variation. This is an example of a masonette just to highlight that there is a every each masonette has a communal garden space and all first four masonettes also have a private balcony space so again the level of external community space afforded to each unit is either meets or exceeds the council's design guide and obviously that's very important in light of the impact that the community has had on such masses and although landscaping is reserved by condition there is a lot of detail about how the landscaping would take place within the site there is a lot of additional tree planting as you can see this includes tree planting within private garden spaces that is something that is mentioned in the neighbourhood plan as a requirement so again the the layout and the planting is responsive to that particular part of the neighbourhood plan policy there is I'm sure it will come up again in a debate there is some existing hedgerows that will be lost within the site that is in part because of the visibility space on the front of the site but the biodiversity document submitted in support of this application does detail that although about 250 meters of hedgerow is lost there's an excess of 300 meters of hedgerows being put in by this development comprising five or more native species so there will be an overall net gain in in terms of hedge planting and biodiversity these next three slides are just the seed some CGI images of the development this is the northern entrance to the site which if I just jump back a slide is this this entrance here so you can see dwellings here are set back from the the public highway and that various spaces layouts varying materials and architectural language throughout the site again responsive to neighbourhood plan policies this is I suppose going in through that northern entrance and turning the corner you've got a view through to the the leap which I should have mentioned sorry earlier is is central at the heart of this development and then a third CGI just looking across the leap again the variation in materials and architectural language and detailing you can see on the house types to create that that different character and variation and sort of ease of movement through through the site through the leap very much at the heart lots of good passive surveillance over the the leap area and throughout the site as a whole and there is a set of reports there is one element of the proposal or one neighbourhood plan policy where the proposed development certainly does conflict with the requirements of the policy that is policy COH1 landscape character which looks at several vistas around the village which are of the important views from around the village to various site points in and around the village the so the policy says as appropriate to their scale and location development proposal should seek to take into account the following vistas in this instance it's Vista 2 that's the important vista and that is a view from ramps and roads to all states church which is obviously a listed church it's about 1.8 kilometres from here and by superimposing the application site you can see how the vista the vista cuts through the development and members will know in appendix four for this report there is a bit of background to Vista 2 in the in an earlier version of the cotton neighbourhood plan the vista was shown to be here on the northeastern edge of the site outline planning consent was granted in May 2018 and so it wouldn't have been necessarily a conflict at that point then the June 2018 draft of the neighbourhood plan moved the vista to ramps and road so this vista point actually appeared after the outline consent was granted that's detailed in appendix four but nonetheless the referendum version of the plan which we're attaching was a significant weight to we do have to acknowledge that it does conflict with this policy to try and show members again if not being to site this is a photograph taken from ramps and road from roughly the where the vista point is shown on the map across to all saints church appreciate it's not particularly clear on the photo it wasn't that much clearer on site to be honest but the church tower is here I jump forward that's a slightly zoomed in version so you can see the view of the church a very limited view of the church but nonetheless it is there that is what the policy is is referring to so quite a long presentation and there's probably a lot of points to cover in the debates I haven't gone into each neighbourhood plan detailed too much but obviously the key material considerations are compliance with the outline plan commission officers are satisfied that any requirements from the outline plan commission have been met within the reserve maps application housing provision including affordable housing has touched on that it meets the mix the affordable housing tenure and distribution is acceptable open space provision is in line with the requirements of the 106 agreements so we're also satisfied in that terms then it's the reserve matters details of layout scale appearance and landscaping I think on the whole and on balance officers are satisfied that it does comply with the neighbourhood plan with the obvious exception of the vista and the report does acknowledge that it would conflict with that policy and then other matters of biodiversity largely reserved by condition flood risk and drainage obviously there's a level of information that comes in with this application and the drainage information that has been submitted is supported by the technical consultees although those details are reserved by condition and highway safety highways are happy with the the layout of the site and highway safety terms each property benefits from minimum requirements for parking residential immunity as mentioned in terms of the future occupies of the development officers consider this to be very high end in terms of the amount of internal and external space that's provided to each unit and that's a big positive to the scheme particularly as the outline consent didn't secure residential space standards so a developer doesn't have to bring those forward but have done in this instance heritage assets again also satisfied that heritage is accept any impact on heritage acceptable the nearest listed building is is quite a distance away of water tower to the south and I think that is for me I expect there'll be some some questions so it's quite a long presentation we have questions or clarifications from firstly councillor breadman okay thank you councillor breadman please thank you chairman um first first of all sorry I do want to ask a matter of clarification but firstly I for mr senior and for the members of the committee I need to make a declaration and that is because I am probably the person in uh itemized uh by the parish councillors having a conflict a potential conflict of interest in the time also a county councillor and thus um the uh suggestion is I might be swayed by the needs of this land as well as being part of this committee uh and thus might be swayed by the needs to consider the council's five-year housing land supply and I'd just like to make it absolutely clear that as in all other situations um I am not uh swayed in any of those directions and I come to this matter completely afresh and I would also say that I take that accusation um with some uh offense that that should be suggested however that being said there are matters of clarification before we go on let's make sure that that is being properly noted and uh there's no legal issues that I need to pursue if I'm not hearing from my advisors that appears to be fine then councillor breadman thank you so if you'd like to launch your clarification please that was addressed under um by officers on paragraph 299 300 of the agenda so there are lots and lots of things to be discussed in this application but the first one I just wanted to clarify with the officer uh is the fundamental principle of what was approved at outline and what has now been submitted as reserved matters and uh in paragraph um 270 on page 70 um hang on that's not the one sorry it's page um sorry forgive me it's paragraph 303 on page 74 uh where it says that the illustrative master pan was not listed as an approved document as part of the outline consent and therefore carries no weight furthermore the footpath and cycleway connection referenced is outside the red line boundary for the development and its provision was not secured by condition all through the section 106 and yet chairman I wanted to clarify through you with the officers how come if that is the case how come um the matters that were inherent in the master plan were considered by the inspection officer at appeal in other words if the inspection officer at the planning inspector at appeal took the matters in the illustrative monster plan into account how is it that we are not allowed to okay thank you for that we'll get some clarification is the section thank you I'll share a copy of the illustrative master plan to help with these discussions um yeah so this is the master plan there's illustrative master plan that was submitted at outline stage and obviously it's quite common that an outline planning application you'll have an illustrative master plan to show that the site is capable of accommodating the level of development proposed um so this you'll see it says on the title it is an illustrative master plan it wasn't listed as an approved document as part of the appeal decision so it doesn't it doesn't carry forward in that respect um so the footpath and I expect will come on space I think when local members speak um is this footpath shown here connecting up to this end of the village development and obviously that would provide the potential for residents here to walk along the path through this means it acts as here alongside the primary school and into the village which is obviously preferable to having to walk through the development site and along ramps and road um members will note that part of that path is outside of the red line boundary um the requirement for that path was not secured by condition it was not secured within the section 106 agreement and as I said this isn't a listed listed as an approved plan so while the inspector could have looked at this um it hasn't been secured at outline stage the footpath hasn't been secured so we can't ask for it now at reserve matters stage as part of the planning application any footpath provision which the development the layout doesn't preclude the possibility of that coming forward because it's very open and permeable on on the boundaries here um but to say it wasn't an approved plan it's not listed as a condition and it's not within the 106 associated to the outbound application so we can't insist on that path as part of the reserve matters stage so chairman if I may just come back to clarify very quickly please thank you my concern thank you very much mr sexton my concern was partly that but also partly to do with the complete with the loss of the land area between the outline and the reserve matter because um I think I'm right in saying with a little bit of a back of a fag packet calculation uh that if you take out the area of les king wood uh and then take out and look at the um the density between the outline application and the reserve matter application effectively the density is doubled on the remaining area with this new application now surely the whole point of sorry I'm going to stop you there cancer bread and goes pays 38 uh item 53 and the density is explained entirely there even with these changes the density is only 24 um yeah just under the report yeah paragraphs um obviously 80 87 through 295 deal with density and it does look at obviously acknowledges that les king wood can't be counted as part of the developed area so there is a calculation for both the reserve matters area and the original outline area um and then the developer in their design that's a statement actually did a density calculation excluding les king wood excluding areas of open space just the developer area and it comes in sort of 22 to 24 dwelling so it is still below the requirements of local plan policy and neighborhood plan policy um even with the two hectares that has not been carried forward but that that's all set out in the report that sorry forgive me what I wanted to clarify was that the inspector approved the quantum of development based on the based on the density at the time so are we simply saying that that density was allowed through the outline but this greater density is still acceptable because it's within our um uh density calculations normally uh so yeah obviously reducing the red line area of reserve and stage makes it a bit more difficult to bring the same number of dwellings forward and obviously part of the response to that is we are looking at 147 properties rather than 154 but nonetheless the density is still falls well below the average requirements um obviously there is now exiting there is allowance within the policy to have a lower density that's responsive to character of the area so with this being an edge of village location obviously officers are happy that a lower density is suitable in this instance so it would accord with policy requirements notwithstanding the changes that have been made since since outline stage next we have Councillor Heather Williams right Councillor Williams please thank you chairman um just a couple of matters of clarification through yourself um the cycling so I can see we've got an objection from CAM cycle it's also been raised by Councillor Tim Wotherspoon um I'm just wondering if Mr Sexton could elaborate on on that um while Councillor Brandon raised about the counter council it's also raised about the five year land supply deficiencies and correcting impressions and things like that so we could just have some advice as as members that we can um to hopefully reassure public on that that we are in a position where we are looking at this as we have a five year land supply and therefore that won't be applying pressure to us um and the drainage concerns we seem to have a bit of a conflict between the um planning sorry the lead flooding authority and the old water drainage board so just some clarification around those thank you very much chairman so thank you Councillor Williams um so in terms of the comments that have been raised by CAM cycle and Councillor Wotherspoon the concerns that have been relay raised relate to matters of access and the visibility displays um those details were have already been approved and they were secured as part of the outline stage and the reserve matters layout follows those approved details I think the concern that's been raised particularly by Councillor Wotherspoon is that there has been some guidance that has come in since the granting of the outline permission um you know as as these things evolve over time but because you know they're already fixed um we can't alter those so the visibility displays have been provided for for vehicle access and cycle access have already been considered and considered to be acceptable um so I don't know the particular details but there's there is this new guidance note which would perhaps alter those if we were looking at an outline application today we might be looking at a slightly different arrangement but those details have already been secured so we can't address that as part of this application um in terms of 5-year land supply and I'm sure colleagues would chip in if necessary uh yes Councillor Minnan which has got a 5-year land supply this is a site that is counted towards 5-year land supply um obviously if members resolve to approve the application then that's the reserve matters ticked for 147 dwellings if matters if members resolve to refuse the application um the developer would obviously have the opportunity to appeal that decision um I think it's also important to note that because of COVID the some of the guidance around the lifetime of planning commissions does say that any deadline for the submission of applications for reserve matters which would have expired between 23rd of March 2020 and 31st of December 2020 is extended to May 2021 so had it not been for COVID this would have been the only reserve matters application the developer could make um but because of the government guidance around the impact of COVID um as well as appeal to my understanding is the applicant would have the opportunity to make a second reserve matters application if required if that's helpful on the 5-year land supply point um drainage I perhaps should have mentioned at the beginning I've invited Hilary Ellis from the Lead Local Flood Authority to attend today because I expected drainage would come up and members do enjoy asking me drainage questions so I have got some technical help this time um there yes so the RFA are satisfied the lower drainage rate and I'll try and explain this but perhaps Hilary can add to it um that was requested by the Drainage Board has been secured the Drainage Board have not have not responded to the Drainage Board have not responded to the latest round of consultation on the amended range information which would address the objection but I don't know if it's worth Hilary stepping in at this point to address the technicalities at that point I'm sure it's going to come up later Mr. Sexton so I think we're just deal with the clarifications but could you actually um just to be very clear about the five-year land supply if there were 147 houses did not go ahead we would still have a five-year land supply I understand that I I can't confirm that all I can confirm that is if members were minded to refuse the application the developer would have the opportunity to appeal and they'd also have the opportunity to submit another reserve matters application so the refusal of the reserve matters today wouldn't necessarily remove 147 dwellings from our supply at this point in time but okay any further than that I'm afraid all right I was just going back to Councillor Williams to check if answered the questions. Councillor Williams. Thank you Chairman and the answer's been very much appreciated and I'll see if there's anything else that comes across my mind later on. I'm sure you will thank you very much so Councillor Thane do we have another speaker? Councillor Nottingham next. Hello my question is about the access to the primary school which is a new on the original I know it's not binding the design master plan illicit master plan showed a larger row going right through and the primary potential primary school site being at the far end of the beyond the development towards the church direction and the new proposal shows a shorter area and access to a different is it suggested is it firmly suggested that if the primary school was built that it would be access directly by onto the land and joining the stub the show or is it likely that the new road will be built right across the playing fields to the far end have we got any indication or how that would do and you are in the report you imply that this is not something that one could take into account is there any degree to which can you confirm this can you illustrate more detail whether that is massive because that's one. Yes thank you councillor I'm just on an open document to illustrate the point but while I'm doing that so yeah the primary school test and I'm sure it will come on to this in the debate between the parish council and members have spoken there are potential plans to expand the primary school and as part of that new access would potentially stem from this site so this this let me share the layout plan operation on a slightly reduced number of screens today so I will be a bit slower jumping around then than normal hopefully members can now see the the layout plan for the site yes we can see them so yeah primary school is is here and the should an expansion come forward and should a new access come forward it's likely to be served by this uh road here um the exact route is not necessarily known but the illicited plan within design access statement and I believe on the outline plan do sort of show the potential for a road across the recreation ground which obviously brings about its own issues in terms of the usability of that space but and while I fully appreciate the parish council's point of view it is an area of land outside of the red line boundary for this application so the layout of this application simply facilitates for the potential access which may or may not come forward which is why I think it'd be very difficult for members to I don't think we could refuse this planning application on the basis of something that may or may not come forward outside of the red line boundary all this development does is facilitate that potential access and has designed the roads to an adoptable potentially an adoptable standard should that become necessary um but certainly yesterday plans that are within this information that come forward as the reserve matters now line stage to sort of show a potential link across the recreation ground but it's it's outside of the red line site and it's not a known element at this time of considering this application so it may work on forward but equally it it may not fine just to be clear there so it's not material to this application and we heard from Robert certainly don't believe we could refuse in that that basis I'm sure if if that's not correct I'm sure Stephen Reed would step in and say otherwise but I would be suggesting we're refusing at the moment thank you oh no I'm just okay okay I think we have councillor Roberts please thank you very much chairman um I don't want to labour the five-year land supply but I'm going to have to say something here and ask some questions because I'm not uh entirely happy in my own mind uh with the answer that's just being given to councillor Heather with Liam's question which was um have we definitely got a five-year land supply if we don't go ahead with this because uh at page 21 paragraph 17 we actually state furthermore the development of the site would result in the provision of 147 dwellings towards the council's five-year housing land supply now I am really concerned because it's not just this application today but it's also mentioned um on another one later into the uh into the meeting the same thing now we are here we are we have officers flagging up two members in there to remind us about the five-year land supply now um I think it's either time that we have that properly explained to us or it didn't appear on agendas in in the future um exactly what it then I'll quickly go down to page 26 which is the uh the parish council's comments and that first paragraph and I don't think it's accusing that accusing us of things I think it's just pointing out their concerns to get clarity of if there is conflict of interest and I have to say it does seem to me that some of the two uh hatted members on the committee today um may actually fall foul of given what we said at paragraph 17 about the five-year land supply and I need to know I think maybe from Mr Reed given what the parish council are saying as its concerns if we were to approve this today are we likely um to get this thrown back at us at the judicial review I mean you know um the rules about standing up and declaring interest pecuniary are not a pretty strong and straightforward I'd like it because I'm going to have to think about it later in the day as well okay let's get the answers a little bit um I missed the text I think you've already given your answer so I'm going to ask Mr Carter a few please thank you chairman yes I can confirm the council does have a five-year land supply uh this uh sites contributes towards the council's five-year land supply and as members will know the council has a requirement upon it to maintain a five-year land supply that's set out in in national planning policy framework guidance and policy so it's important that we consider the delivery of new homes in the context of this and any other planning application that that proposes to deliver new homes but I can confirm we do have a five-year land supply if this application were to be refused for any reason the council would maintain a five-year land supply but of course that's an evolving picture that takes into account a wide number of other sites across the district but we do have a five-year land supply this would contribute towards it so that is a the delivery of new homes is a material consideration for the committee as part of the discussion today sorry chairman hang on let me deal with this and if we could deal with the um the legal question of interest yes thank you chair um well I will ask Mr Reid to come in on that but certainly in my experience it's not unusual to have members who have twin hats so-called uh and that they are uh perfectly able to determine applications in these circumstances but perhaps you may like to hear from Mr Reid on that as well yes please could I just ask Mr Carter to clarify what he means by twin or or councillor Roberts when they say twin hats uh well we have councillors uh good good morning Mr Reid uh we have councillors who are councillors and I'm pointing out to Mr Reid at page um at page 26 that first top paragraph which is the comments and concerns of the of the parish council that they lay out there to them and I would say that there are also uh district councillors on this committee who are very much at the forefront of the five-year land supply and it's very important to um both particular district councillors um that um applications wherever um albeit within obviously a agreed policies and things get through and I'm just wondering you know why more people are actually a little bit more concerned about their positions all right thank you Mr Reid uh chair if I may um we've heard from councillor uh Bradnum you may wish to invite other members who are said to have twin hats to comment on uh whether they're coming to the matter afresh and looking at the application on its merits I don't think any there is any need for any additional legal comments right thank you very much so uh it's up to members to make decorations of interest if they feel that it is necessary um councillor Bradnum has already made her position clear okay thank you very much do we have further speakers please councillor Richard Williams would like to speak councillor Richard Williams please thank you very much chair um I know councillor Bradnum has already discussed this but I just want to go back to this point about the difference between the uh red line site at uh at outline stage and the site now and just get a bit bit of further clarification that we are actually still dealing with the same application because there is an argument to be made and the parish council makes the argument I think that this is a different application it has a different outline third parties would have commented on the initial application on the basis that the area I put forward for development was going to be developed now the landowner is proposing to hold back a portion of that site for a different use um and and I just want some clarification you know because my understanding is that once you get an outline applicant planning application the developer commits to developing the area that they were given permission for and that seems to have changed here so can I just get a bit of clarification that this does still actually fall within outline um it's the outline planning application it's not actually a new application okay thank you this is set some phase thank you chair um yes I mean reserve massive applications it's not uncommon I suppose that you could secure an outline planning commission and then you come forward in phases so you come forward for phase one which would have a smaller red line boundary than the original outline and then you come forward with phase two now obviously this isn't a phased approach but that's just an example of how the red line boundary reserve matter stage can be smaller than that secured outline stage as long as that red line boundary is entirely within what was you know approved the outline stage um then the reserve mass application is in accordance with the principle of the developments being established it's if you're reducing the size and still trying to bring forward the same number of dwellings it makes it more difficult in terms of you know complying with design and density policies but certainly there's no conflict with the outline permission in terms of bringing forward this slightly reduced red line boundary and in some respects the developer has had to respond to that by reducing um the number of dwellings that has been put forward to members today I appreciate it's not reduced the extent the parish council feel is appropriate but as set out on report the density remains acceptable um so there's no there's no conflict with what was established outline because then we are still looking at the same site the same development it's still residential development so um there's no conflict there all right thank you very much I think Mr. Carpenter wanted to speak did you uh no not for me thank you Jim no you have councillor Braden and want to speak again and I'm also down to speak myself all right okay do you want to speak first and uh councillor Fein and then I'll go to councillor Braden thank you chairman I'll I'll come in next then um I think Mr. Sexton's been very clear about the relationship with the neighborhood plan about the weight we should give that um but my concerns my understanding was that only in relation to one aspect of the neighborhood plan is their significant conflict this is in relation to vista 2 and I would appreciate guidance on two points there the first is as was pointed out when the outline consent was granted in May 2018 at appeal the neighborhood plan did not then have the same status so what weight do we put on it in relation to that um and the second thing is we were shown a photograph of this vista which appeared to show the church tower only I think in the distance I just wondered to what extent that aspect of the whether the church tower is likely to be still visible over the houses at the uh slightly higher height of up to 10 meters ridge height whether any evidence has been presented on that point thank you Mr. Sexton please thank you chair so yes as set out in appendix three I believe it is it attempts to show appendix four sorry it does show the development of the neighborhood plan alongside the sort of timelines of the outline consent and clearly there is an argument that could be made that the outline consent was established before the vista was shown on ramps and road um in conversations with parish uh they sort of said to me well it's all that map is always being illustrative of as to where the vista actually is clearly the intent is a vista towards the church which when you go to site you actually get a better view of the site to the as you travel further towards ramps and along ramps and road from the other side of the flasco towards this application site nonetheless the vista the you know the referendum version of the neighborhood plan has it's got to referendum stage with the vista shown where it is in the plan so we have to acknowledge that the layout of the site would conflict with the policy as it has moved forward rightly or wrongly so that is acknowledged in the report there is a condition recommended that so we we could look to explore some sort of landscape um feature along the edge of Leskingwood to try and celebrate that view towards the church um I think it's obviously that by by putting residential properties onto this site you are going to be obscuring the views that are currently available from ramps and road to the church tower as you saw in the photo at that time of year it's quite a limited view anyway so you may still get some glimpsing views from ramps road but I think I think most of them would be lost but there would obviously be views from within the site towards the church um but certainly I think the ones along ramps and road that are current there would obviously be obscured by the residential development which has been established on the site so there is a conflict and we have to acknowledge that conflict and weigh that in the planning balance which is why we're here today is that helpful thank you very much um Councillor Bradman you want to pursue another point thank you chairman I just wanted to clarify this as far as I'm aware I'm the only twin-hatted member that is both district council and county council member on the planning committee today um but the other thing I wanted sorry I meant to come back on hedgerows and I wondered if um the case officer Mr Sexton could just clarify um in the application there's um information about um sort of it's acknowledged sort of regrettable loss of hedgerow which I think mainly refers to that it's refers to loss of 250 meters of hedgerow along ramps and road but I just wanted to check my understanding is of the red line on the reserved matters application it looks to me as if the um dog leg hedgerow that goes across the centre of the site much of that is also going to be lost which can you confirm that Mr Sexton because there's also reference to hedgerow being planted but actually all of that roughly speaking eastern boundary of the development part of it would have been against the existing rather good hedgerow and I just wanted to clarify is it your understanding much of that will be taken out which would be all right thank you Mr Sexton please so yeah the reference to 247 meters of hedgerow that is lost uh that includes hedgerow that's required visibility space and I believe it does also include some of the existing hedgerows within the red line boundary to accommodate the development obviously the the biodiversity information that's come forward does highlight that although obviously a loss of any hedgerow is regrettable there will be a net gain planted throughout the site so while 247 will be lost in and around the site 300 meters um in excess of 300 meters comprising mixed species we will be going in as part of the landscape strategy um that's only sort of highlighted as a master plan at this point because the reserve the actual full details of landscaping are reserved by condition um but the reports that have been submitted obviously do indicate that we will be seeing more hedgerow planted than is lost obviously acknowledging what is you know what is lost is obviously regrettable thank you okay thank you very much uh I think that's all our speakers are on clarification so I'm going to move on to public speakers now is uh Mr Michael Brown with us please yes I am can you hear me can indeed good morning Mr Brown good morning uh good morning Mr Chairman good morning councillors good and you know the system do you you've got three minutes yep I'll do my best let you know when the time's up okay okay when you're ready good morning everybody um my name is Michael Brown and my wife and I live at 120 Rabbitton Road one of the short line of houses to the south of the site that will back onto this development we along with our neighbours have objected to the houses proposed to build immediately behind us on grounds of their proximity their height and the steeply pitched roofs when built we believe these houses will be two three meters higher than the established houses rendering them overbearing and overshadowing although they are located at the minimum allowable separation distance we fear we still will suffer lots of privacy and lots of light to our living spaces design perspective the Kotlin Village design statement um and this is guideline b6 requests that and I quote new developments should refer to local building forms and proportions and should reflect those that are adjacent the differences in form and proportion due to the steeply pitched roofs and the height uh here are significant and are accentuated by the close proximity so we are pleased to see that the office's report in section seven does acknowledge that these houses will cause harm but we cannot agree that this is minor further we find that the officer's assertion that the application should be approved because unbalance the merits of the development outweigh the harm to be unsatisfactory this approach almost by definition will always deliver a suboptimal outcome unless ways are sought to remediate or mitigate the harm that will be caused and we believe that such mitigation is possible here by relocation or removal of these houses the parish council is also arguing for this for them it would enable them to realize an objective of a neighborhood plan that the field between us and the recreation ground be used in its entirety for sports facilities in particular for an all-weather multi-use games area which cannot be accommodated within the current design provision of this would deliver a very positive outcome for the entire village in the outline application appeal report section 35 the inspector also recognized that harm could be caused by these houses and stated that since there was space available that they should be located elsewhere but the applicant has ignored the inspector's recommendation and has instead reduced the red line area by two hectares and without a corresponding reduction in number of houses so we would ask the committee to consider carefully how the harms identified which affects the entire community can be mitigated to deliver an optimal solution it seems evidence that within the red line area proved to outline a layout could be achieved that would would better meet objectives of all parties thank you very much thank you Mr Brown members do you have any questions of clarification for Mr Brown I'm looking in the chats nope so thank you very much Mr Brown sorry I'm struggling to get to this could I may I speak first we have councillor to me Hawkins and then councillor Bradnam okay councillor Hawkins quick thank you Mr Brown for for the points you have brought forward just to clarify what in your estimation is the difference between the reach height of your property and the ones that are supposed to be behind in the new development okay so the new development those particular houses are from a building type they are they are 9.3 meters high our house is 8.3 meters high but the our house is the highest in the row of houses so I think the other houses may be a meter below that so smaller houses and I also understand that when built houses are often higher than as designed because of brown from the the footings and so on being spread around so they are built higher than as designed so that that leads me to the two to three meter height difference so they as designed they could be two meters higher than the some of that lower houses in this in this nine pound another meter when it comes in but being built okay thank you for that all right thank you I think I've got councillor Bradnam please I withdraw that was the question I was going to ask thank you okay right thank you I can let you go with this time okay thank you very much everybody thank you for your contribution um is Mr David Alpin with us yeah Mr Chairman I'm here thank you you like to turn on okay so you know the system do that you know there's three minutes and then big questions so when you're ready yes okay thanks thanks very much thank you Mr Chairman for the opportunity to speak to you all today in support of this application my name is David Applin and I'm the senior development manager with this land responsible for the delivery of the project for those who may not be aware this land was established by Cambridge County Council for the purpose of providing much needed quality housing all revenue that we generate goes back to help pay for the delivery of frontline services such as education health social care within the community we are a developer that can make a difference our core values are about delivering quality design based around sustainability ecology and with community at the forefront in all that we do working within the existing outline consent throughout the design processes we have collaborated extensively with statutory consultees and key stakeholders and in particular the local community to help ensure this application is wholly compliant and will serve as a positive contribution to the cotton community achieving a detailed master plan that suits all parties both in architecture and layout has been challenging however the requirement and desire by all those involved to service residents needs housing needs ecology and the future sporting and recreation needs of the community has remained pivotal throughout our policy planning process through extensive consultation with the parish council and officers of South Cambridgeshire district councils built a natural environment team we have listened we have designed we have redesigned and together we feel we have produced a scheme that balances and places the built environment and the needs of the local community both today and tomorrow at the very heart of our proposal in achieving that balance we have reduced the total number of dwellings by seven to 147 and all homes are 10 year blind the scheme will deliver 40 percent affordable housing and over 50 percent of the total number of homes are either one or two bed which will greatly assist local first-time buyers the protection of less kingwood has formed a vital component in our design the wood will be enhanced by a long-term woodland management plan it will also benefit from new access points for the increased enjoyment of the local community our proposal both in landscape and ecology will deliver a biodiversity net gain with species rich habitats being created across the site in addition to the 1.6 million pound contra contribution to the local infrastructure by way of the section 106 agreement we will also be extending the existing cycle and footpath network through the development which will help reduce local car journeys and encourage active travel crucially and not part of the section 106 agreement our design allows for a future access point to service copman primary school and enables the school to continue to grow and to flourish this application helps safeguard the school expansion so that access is both safe and sustainable for the whole community sustainability is vital to achieving a greener future and combat the climate emergency we'll face and as a company we are proud that we are years ahead of the government's initiative to reduce the use of fossil fuels by designing an air source heat pumps as a means of heating i hope this resume has been helpful and that you agree with your office's recommendation and vote to deliver this scheme as part of cottonham's local plan to provide well-designed sustainable housing for the greener future the community deserves thank you all right thank you very much members do we have questions gentlemen we have the council of ripeth first council ripeth please hello good morning um you said about the sustainability and the biodiversity of the development so i have a couple of questions for clarification um with hedgerows your aiming to put in i think it was 300 meters of hedgerows could you explain whereabouts they will be and how that will help with bees and insects able to get around the site um with no so that obviously a main issue with biodiversity okay the the question that you've asked is actually quite detailed and quite specific i don't have the ability to share my screen but there is a very detailed comprehensive chapter within the design and access statement and the relevant chapters that is supported by that and i would suggest that you just refer to that or indeed to michael sexton and he'll be able to point that out in in the detail that i think that your question requires okay um the other one was about cycling and getting around the site um i'm a little bit sort of concerned about the footpath which has been kind of it seems to be removed on the reserve matters application i mean how far would it how long would it take to walk to the centre of the village um under the new sort of plans right okay so that footpath has as the planning officer said that was shown um on the outline consent was an indicative footpath and does not form art um of a material consideration however we are all about sustainability and we are all about reducing car journeys um and we've worked extensively with the parish council and indeed the the district council in providing footpath routes that on a plan that actually hasn't been shown here today that you will have in your documentation and the whole development is is is porous um so as well as providing the cycle passes as we rightly have to in the section 106 agreement there are also additional footpaths across land which don't forget isn't owned by us it's all by the parish council but we've worked extensively with them to agree routes um that basically do not um if you like jeopardize any future sporting pitch or sporting surface um extension in the future um so there's we there's there is a number of footpaths that that we have proposed but we can only propose them because we can only take the footpath to our boundary after that it's it's for the parish council or indeed a neighbouring landowner to decide whether that footpath can go off into Kotlin for example okay would it be okay for Michael Sexton to show us any either that will both of these plans i'm i'm very happy for them to be shared absolutely there's there's there's well i'd like to move on if that's all right okay we can return to this when we get to the debate thank you then councillor ritchard williams thank you with councillor hawkins actually before me i'm ready to give the advice of the vice chair so what's councillor bradnam before me councillor feina is the one who is uh dealing with the list councillor ritchard williams yep i'm sorry but you it's all right already it doesn't matter does it we'll get you in a moment don't worry so councillor williams please thank thank you chair um this is really actually it's a comment arising from from what mr applin has said and it's no criticism of mr applin at all but i think it would be useful to reassure members of the public if we could just have a bit of some clarification from mr reed or mr carter that the purposes for which the funds raised from this development would be used e.g fund public services is not a material consideration for this committee uh that is quite clear i think um yeah sorry i'm just trying to get things on yes we take all that on board mr carter you wanted to confirm that then did you yeah sorry just just through you yes i confirm that that interpretation from councillor williams is is correct thank you very much do we have councillor annett bradnam which i think he's on this one not the last one is it that's correct thank you if through you chairman thank you very much um i wanted to ask mr applin whether he would accept that an established hedge has greater diversity than a newly planted hedge and i wondered whether he would be amenable uh and i'm thinking about hedges both along rampton road and with on the eastern boundary of the houses i wondered whether he would be amenable to a condition that required him to maintain existing hedges wherever possible even if that meant cutting them quite short because he could still then maintain the um his aspiration for open openness i wondered whether he would be prepared to accept that um it's it's not something i too could agree to at the moment but in in principle um there is absolutely no reason why and and we and we haven't done this anyway that we're not just going to remove hedges for removing hedgerow's sake um any hedgerow that we've had to remove has basically been to enable development maybe because of safety reasons because of highways and visibility displays um but has already been gone into we we are planting in excess of the number of hedgerows that we're actually removing to your to your first point again the detail you require i'm not qualified to tell you about the species rich varieties that are going to be planted um but again it will all be in that report and i think it's already been actually conditioned anyway so you'd be able to see clarification on that all right thank you very much then we have councillor to me Hawkins councillor Hawkins please uh thank you chair um obviously through you to mr afling um thank you for all that you have explained i think what i want to clarify from you so i mean you say you've worked hard with um parish council that you've listened um however there seems to be this design feature in the houses which is of very steep um steep roofs um and i just wanted to find out from you if that is a feature that runs through the village or is it a is it a because you've you've selected that as a feature for your for your side but from what i've seen of cotton that is not a typical um feature so how come you've settled on that one please okay um we we've got 10 house types on this on this on this development um and as you know we've we've attended a number of design reviews panels with the with um South Cambridge District Council's built environment team so we have worked hand in glove with basically agreeing the materials um and the and the visual appearance of these buildings um and we have been working it's about two years now and again we've obviously taken in the design guide for Kotlin and some roofs you're right if you actually walk around the village you will see varying pictures of roofs um these are modern houses obviously built with modern but traditional materials and so the the actual pitch of the roof as the planning officer explained is not untypical of some of the houses and some of the dwellings that you're actually going to find within Kotlin and all the surrounding area uh may i come back chair i don't think you've answered my question how typical are steep roofs they're not very typical are they it's just a small percentage of Kotlin that has steep roofs i would i would i would respectively disagree okay then have councillor robert thank you very much councillor robert's please thank you oh gosh thank you chairman my camera's not working yet thank you very much chairman and through you chairman i'm sure that um we've really heard that a complimentary uh flowing appreciation from an applicant for their own application is this one and i wonder given um the uh the words that were spoken and the claims that were made i'm sure that um the county council's representative must be very disappointed at listening to what the neighbours say and the uh very detailed explanations of the parish council's feelings i wonder if you could also tell me um given the fact that you have got two hectares less less of land that you are using why you have only chosen to take out seven dwellings from a two-hectare area one of the great concerns of neighbours that mr brown said at the start was the uh nearness to um those that are already around and i would have thought that if you are as listening as you are saying that you are you would have taken that on board and actually taken some of that problem away by not having dwellings uh so many dwellings on this site and therefore giving some relief to people already in place why have you not done that uh council robert's thank you for your question um there are a number of questions within that uh overarching question um we we don't act the the two hectares that were removed we don't actually own so as the planning officer tried to explain um this isn't a phase development we have we are delivering in a single phase we don't actually own those two hectares that were removed but we had to achieve the same amount of housing within a much smaller area now why it looks very it looks very simple on plan but you've but you've got a number of parties all of which conflict with each other so the parish council rightly and i would do the same want the maximum amount of land which is actually our land um that they would like for future expansion of recreational purposes that is admirable and we've worked with them but at the same time you have um the les kingwood which is a which is a key cotton and assets and we don't want to encroach into the wood so we've pulled away from the wood and we've also pulled away so we've given all we're proposing to um allow the parish council as much land as possible we've worked with the parish council on a number of pitch configurations and i appreciate that we don't have time today but actually there is plenty of room within what is left to actually install a mugger and a number of five aside football pitches there is there is actually space there but at the same time we still have to provide an access for future potential expansion of the primary school as well as 15 a number of houses and yes that has been we've lost seven houses the back to back distance with the objection that was voiced earlier actually are we we we have exceeded back to back distances and again we have lost seven units which we're quite happy to lose seven units because we're about quality we're not about cramming houses into a small area that's that's not what we about that's not sustainable and it doesn't look like an environment for the residents of of cottonham okay thank you very much yeah we have no other speakers but michael sexton was offered to clarify a point here i'm not sure that that'd be very helpful at the moment i think we we know what we know so thank you very much indeed miss alpin thank you mr chairman thank you and we move on then to the parish council representative which is councillor morris councillor morris are you with us can you hear me now yep i'm going to hear you can't see you yet though oh that could be a blessing um it's supposed to be on but i'll i'll carry on in the it may okay sorry i'm sure you know you know the system then sure indeed i do he is whenever you're ready thank you um first could i uh give a sincere apology to councillor bradman it was certainly not intended to give personal offense to her in her position uh it was perhaps a slightly heavy-handed approach to bring to the committee's visibility that there are multiple county council issues that have a bearing on this so i'm sorry certainly um yeah good morning still um and thank you for this opportunity um if i can start by saying that the parish council contends that insufficient weight is being given to certain policies in our neighborhood plan uh which as you know we've been working on for five years only to be a little thwarted earlier in the year by covid but lots of other plans have gone awry in that time the cotton neighborhood plan was recommended by the examiner and the district council to go to referendum but that was suspended by your ceo in march based on fears about safety with covid but subsequently the government has asserted that such plans should be given significant weight this interpretation we believe could and should lead to the planning authority treating the neighborhood plan as part of the local plan in key areas including site design and except in the parish council interpretation of the policies it actually wrote itself um the parish council's comments are more consistent with the findings of the appeal inspector and our neighborhood plan examiner independent plan examiner of course the developer rather than amending any significant design detail has focused on numbers number of houses despite buying a smaller site and then arguing why in their opinion they consider the application is consistent with the neighborhood plan and even questioning the plan's weight relative to the district design guide which was not mentioned at all by the appeal inspector um the authority appears to be defending rather than testing the developer's approach that's perhaps an exception of the committee from what i've heard this morning including the worrying attempted rebuttal of the persimmon 8 as i call it surface water planning condition which is applied with your council's help to both the persimmon and red row reserve masses applications specifically to meet our policy coh 22 e f and g on surface water drainage but as a reminder the government says neighborhood planning gives communities direct power to develop a shared vision for their neighborhood and shape the development of growth of the local area they're able to choose where they want new homes shops and offices to be built have their say on what those new buildings should look like and what infrastructure should be provided enough um okay i'll move on from that at examination in 2019 the examiner the independent examiner in his report said this neighborhood plan includes a range of policies and seeks to bring forward positive and sustainable development in the neighborhood planning neighborhood area it seeks to refine the local green spaces in the village it also identifies potential development sites within the village itself in the round the plan has successfully identified a range of issues where it can add value to the strategic context already provided by the wider development plan we believe the officer report takes a view that is too close to that of the developer gives insufficient weight to the examined MP policies cited from the continent plan and the application should be refused unless and until progress is made on the issues raised allowing you to encourage rather than discourage the development of further neighborhood plans and we did in our last submission identify mitigations that are possible in all the areas where we have objections but unlike what mr. Applin was recently saying the this land proposition has not changed they have not listened um whether on whatever aspect it is thank you all right thank you very much i think we have some speakers do we council chairman yes we have first councillor bradham councillor bradham please thank you chairman um good morning uh frank nice to see you and you can i say thank you very much i accept your apology i suspected it was not intended directly at me and i also i'm very aware of the amount of work and time you have put into developing your village design statement and your neighborhood plan so i appreciate how close it is to your heart i particularly wanted to ask you that i know you have been trying to what is the word assemble land such that you can have the maximum area for open play and recreation and sports pitches and such like and i wanted to if you could perhaps talk us through what impact you think this application might have on your potential wishes for how you wanted to use that land for recreation space yes and i'll try and be brief there are complications because of the county council's other aspirations on the land it's likely that land in the north of the overall site will be taken away because of the primary school expansion some of that land is unusable because of um surface water one of the issues that we raised with this land on their own development which i'm sure they don't yet appreciate the false sense sense of um but ideally there's a piece of land that the county would not sell to this land and we think they're holding it back because to use effectively as a ransom against some of the land that they'll take away for the primary school but there's no guarantee we will get that land so at the moment we could be constrained to what we call our first and second field and the third field that we leased at some expense from the county council 20 years ago i think we will lose a lot of that land and the pitches that were on it and the land that this land is possibly offering and it's still not clear exactly how much land and on what terms is not enough to replace that and it means in practice that um we probably would have to do some sort of all-weather upgrade on that area to substitute for some land that we will lose elsewhere and that would be a costly venture i think we'll get the picture there just one more one more if i make the possibility of fitting a full-scale football pitch with the three or four meter respect lines that the FA require is limiting how we could use that land that this land is offering currently so those extra houses being removed is very important all right thank you very much next we have councillor rippith right councillor rippith please good morning just so bearing in mind everything you said and thank you for the detail in your report in our gender papers if the number of houses were reduced to the pro-rata amount taking out the hectares on the two hectares i believe it is reduced from the outline to say 120 or so houses would many of your concerns be addressed by that would there be space for you know the pitches the footpaths the hedgerows the things that you hoped to be part of your neighborhood the short answer is yes it basically there is scope and in one sense it's annoying to hear David Applin suggest some of the things along lesking wood we did liberally reduce the size of lesking wood as far as local green space was concerned to allow him more flexibility on where the houses were going to go along that line the way they've chosen to put them blocks the vista as we've heard which is wrong if a neighborhood plan is going to be respected at all that vista has to be retained and that would take out about a number of the houses there's a few along the front of the i think they call it their green or something which should also go and there's the five that mr brown referred to should go and if those went as you say bringing it out about 120 there is a workable design okay thank you that's really helpful thank you very much we have council Hawkins council Hawkins please thank you good morning thank you for your comprehensive response to this so one of the things I want to explore with you is the the the appearance and the proportion of the buildings and especially those that are towards the south now I did I did try to run to get from Mr Applin his you know his view on why the the buildings seem to be so tall I mean in my estimation two three story buildings should be what no more than perhaps eight meters 8.5 and yet we have stuff that is going up to 10 meters yes there is no sensitivity at all as mr Brown said and in fact I pointed out to him the when the groundwork is finished as we found on the bellway site the finished level of the land that people start building up from is probably a good two meters higher than it was when they started and so putting houses close even within the rules to the rows of houses on rumpson road already the second row effectively is insensitive at best and they should be pulled back but on the other hand that eats into land that the parish council want for sport of course um the steep roofs make no sense at all um in Cottenham and one of the things that we've been careful not to do is that I think this land have spoken far more to the district design guide across at Cambridge where I don't I'm not an expert on it but there probably are more steeper roof houses steeper pitched houses in Cottenham as you say there are very few and one of the tragedies that we have at the moment is planning that focuses more on the broader district and tends to homogenize rather than picking up the character of individual villages and that's what neighborhood plans are supposed to do as village design guides are supposed to do is now a tragedy if we lost that uh well you understand that I do I do thank you for that clarification I did things because I have spent time in Cottenham in the past I have worth there you know I know what it's like so I was quite surprised um by the comments I received previously so thank you for that clarification um as also just towards the less king words it seemed to me that the houses have been pushed quite close to that what's your what's your response to that yes they have um and I say in the past and I don't think we've had any meaningful conversation with this land for well over a year despite all sorts of assurances when the noble plan was when the referendum was suspended the we tried to open up as I say by pulling the um designation of the local green space back to the pathways within the wood to allow more leeway and gap between the houses and the wood itself in practice that area is still overdeveloped they've put a strip of houses pretty much along almost right along the vista almost deliberately along the vista it would seem but I'm sure it wasn't deliberate it's just insensitive thank you thank you next we have councillor Roberts unless you want to invite take up Michael Sexton's offer to clarify on Les King Wood no I'd like to complete the um members comments questions first please councillor Roberts please um thank you chairman just uh I was actually going to make the two points with my um particular concern with the numbers and the heights and those questions have been very well put by my colleagues councillor Griffith and councillor Hawkins and thank you councillor Morris Ramstone thank you chairman excellent thank you very much so we have no other speakers listed okay uh councillor um Mr Sexton did you want to come back in well before we do that our release councillor Morris thank you very much for your contribution this morning thank you so Mr Sexton did you want to expand on the Kingswood issue yeah if it's appropriate at this point I can wait till the debate I've put together a plan that overlays the two hectares has been lost with the outline application which I think will help members we'll come back to that then because I've still got two more speakers and I'd like to complete those please so uh local councillors I believe wish to speak is councillor Gough with us please I am um thank you chair and before I start can I just make a declaration because I will reference the Old West River IDB in my comments and I am along with councillor Wilson board members of the IDB um but of course their role in this application is completely independent of our role as board members that's noted just before you start Mr Gough could members and visitors please turn off their cameras and their microphones thank you okay thank you um the setting of this development is important it's adjacency to the intensively used recreation ground and very important very important is now joining very important local green space of lesbian wood a much loved tranquil area I want to highlight three points the outline application was for 154 dwellings the developed area has been reduced but the number of houses or dwellings has not been reduced commensurately pro rata a poor precedent but note in particular the layout of the area to the northeast of ramp till farm that is now being developed that will compromise future potential expansion of recreation space hasn't visited the neighborhood plan and explained by councillor Morris once lost it will never be possible to recover that flexibility secondly given the adjacencies boundaries on this site were important of particular significance and this has been mentioned by councillor Bradman and council ripper is the linear mature hedge probably about 500 meters that runs along the whole eastern and north lee boundary away from rampton road this is noted and considered in the biodiversity report to be a habit of principle importance however on the inspection of the layout of the design it looks like it's incompatible with the retention of this hedge road the officers report and pay appara 126 says the eastern boundary of the site will remain relatively open and allow access onto the adjacent recreation open areas that implies that the hedgerow would be removed but the aforementioned biodiversity report assumes in para 3.3.2 that that hedgerow will be retained that is completely inconsistent and it suggests to me that the conclusion of the local net gain from the biodiversity report which has been mentioned on a couple of occasions so far is flawed as reference in para 220 that inconsistency cannot be allowed to pass unresolved thirdly drainage drainage is important in cotton to those of you who visited the site will have noticed the waterlogged ground on the site and the considerable slope locally it is referred to as a hill i'm worried that the idb has not opined on the scheme i'm also concerned that the parish council remains concerned this is really important because if the retention facilities proved to be insufficient it could really compromise the utility of the local green space that would be a real loss and i hope members of the committee will discuss and review the drainage issues thank you very much chairman i don't have any questions listed at this stage okay well thank you thank you very much for your contribution chairman i now have councillor bradden and wanting to ask a question yeah of course councillor bradden is of course chairman thank you um thank you councillor gough um i wondered uh in your consideration of the drainage arrangements and the sud pond can you just explain to me is your fear that the sud if the sud pond is inadequate that that will actually end result in flooding of lez king wood or is it your impression that it will overflow into the idb catch catch drain well i think the plan is that the idb drain is the actual outlet for for the the drainage system there's two issues i think with the retention one of which is the scale of the retention i hope i hope it is right um the scale is appropriate for for the requirements of the drainage system but secondly the other points and and the parishes uh pointed this out to as well the the actual land in lez king wood is very very um claggy uh it's silty so it often gets waterlogged it has actually had standing water on it um in the past uh when it rains heavily and obviously if that um if that area does not drain uh effectively it reduces the utility of the use of that local green space thank you councillor nick right next all right thank you councillor right please thank you chairman and my question to councillor gough is this that um i note from my emails that you and councillor wilson arranged uh visits to the site or members of the planning committee could i ask whether the chairman was present in all those visits well um i i can answer that uh no he wasn't i made an independent visit to the site myself um this is an official visit in that as things stand with the you know the present pandemic that we are not making official visits so these were visits requested by the local member and it was up to members of the committee in light of your response probably my next question will be to steven read it uh when i come to make comments so thank you very much okay so uh do we have any other there's no other questions i think to councillor gough so thank you very much councillor gough for your contribution and councillor williams wilson thank you chair i hope you can hear me um they went ready you know there's three minutes okay thanks like as we've heard cotton them has both a village design statement and a neighborhood plan which is currently subject to referendum both have been drawn up with the participation of residents and are intended to give local people the opportunity to have input into how their community develops the neighborhood plan which incorporates elements of the village design statement which due to go to referendum as we've heard but because of covid it didn't but government regulations um require that they the um neighborhood plan is given significant weight in decision making so far as the plan is material to the application a steep pitched roof is an exception in cotton them rather than the norm and the design here creates a conflict with the village design statement the impact is all the more significant for the existing properties in the vicinity the proximity and height of the new houses is highly likely to create overshadowing we've already seen this happen on the bellway development in cotton them the groundworks raised the level of the houses causing overlooking that could not be remedied by six foot high fencing the officer acknowledges the visual harm created by the additional height however page 39 of the agenda refers to a 21st century design to explain the departure from the neighborhood plan given that the neighborhood plan has been drawn up and approved by the examiner in the 21st century and that it is specific to cotton them why accept this departure from that document rather than seek to give it the significant weight that is required by government regulation especially if it is acknowledged that the height of the roofs creates a visual harm the visual the finished design statement and the neighborhood plan both seek to encourage walking and cycling and the reduction in car use this development is remote from the core of the village the new residents will have a roundabout walk via rampton road and lambs lane to reach the nursery the primary school and the core of the village to use local shops and facilities pedestrians will need to navigate a narrow pavement on the busy roads on which the local speed watch team regularly flags up speeding traffic this is equally intimidating for cyclists the outline plans submitted to the inspector highlighted the prospect of off road paths to the village core their absence in this application for forcing residents to walk and cycle along a very busy road is highly likely to result in car dependency this plan makes no attempt therefore to ameliorate car dependency the remoteness the lack of more direct off-road walking and cycling to the village core as well as the design of the houses that is an odd with the village design statement will do nothing to help the new residents feel part of the existing community in cotton them thank you all right thank you very much um councillor right your camera is still on i don't know if you know you did apologies right uh councillor fein we have speakers councillor fein are you with us i don't know if we've lost councillor fein have we councillor fein is muted we have councillors hawkins and councillor bradden and plus myself listed to speak german right okay so i think you're first on the list aren't you councillor fein so if you like to go ahead again yes my question relates to the design and the roof pitches um i noted that at paragraph 53 the urban design officers were supported of changes introduced to the scheme and considered that these accorded with the design objectives so sit out in the cotton and village design statement and the neighborhood plan um it was further suggested at one point earlier this morning that the roof pitches and therefore the height of the ridges was in part a response to the village design statement it may have been a response to the neighborhood plan that wasn't clear to me at the time i wondered if councillor wilson could comment on that um i this has always been discussed earlier with um councillor hawkins the generality of roof pitches is now exiting is lower um high pitched roofs are not the norm in cotton and given that um especially in the case of the the houses that are going to be backing onto the houses in mountain mode um it's not necessary and as um councillor morris said it's insensitive to say the least um high pitched roofs are not the generality of the shape of roofs in cotton them all right thank you then we have councillor hawkins i think has the Hawkins please uh thank you jeff um i think my my question to you really is on the uh on access to the village centre i mean i know uh mr harplin said there's a map somewhere that shows some paths that we put together i mean did any were you aware of any of this happening i mean what was there i presume you discuss with them you know access from there into the centre into the school um but it seems the maps that we have done actually show um you know how people from that development are going to be getting to the village um i i think in particular if we look at the people in the northeast who will be living in the northeast corner of the site they will have a very long walk um or cycle there are cycle there will be cycle paths provided for in the development but they will have a very long walk to get to access the school where there could be a more direct pathway that goes um straight oh sorry so i was just ringing the my doorbell um well timed um yes um they will have to walk along rampton road and lambs lane and i think human nature is such that people will just get into their cars there is already a problem with people driving their school and causing obviously risky and dangerous and to have even more people doing that at the same time is just um just horrendous so there should be some way for these people to be able to access the village core and it's about accessing village amenities village um pub shops at the human nature is going to dictate that they will get into their cars and this does nothing to prevent that happening thank you councillor bradnam and councillor bradnam please thank you councillor the Hawkins hasn't again asked the question i was going to ask sorry that's fine then so it was to do with how long it would take to get from um those houses in the north corner to into the village centre i understand that my colleague councillor now i'm going to interrupt now i'm sorry we have to have to actually address the actual application before the the principle of the development is was decided at the outline stage so that is not within our power to to review that again okay so i think we've done the speakers there so councillor wilson thank you very much for your contribution thank you so members um just before we go on i think mr sexton would just like to clarify some elements about king ward mr sexton please yeah thank you chair i just wanted to be helpful before starting the debate just to i'll just put together a plan that shows the two hectares have been moved um in terms of the density i don't know if that would be helpful to members um can i just share my screen this is i've literally just super imposed so this is the outline master plan showing what indict illustratively uh may have come forward and the inspector would have had before him when considering density okay the area that i've drawn is now joining the area that i've marked in blue just for context shows the two hectares that has been removed from the development site a reserve matter stage so when looking at the argument of what the inspector considered density wise to what we're considering density wise now members should note that the area removed although again illustratively only only affects 20 dwellings a lot of the area that's no longer part of the application was never shown indictively to be um residential development so how the how the density would have been considered by the inspector on the basis of this plan is very similar to how the density is being considered within this reserve matters application because the two hectares removed was not shown illustratively to be two hectares of housing um i just thought that might help clarify on that point and regarding lez king wood and i do acknowledge that the parish council haven't drawn the local green space boundary right up to the edge of the wood um an original layout of the plan did have houses much closer to lez king wood than currently proposed as before members now that was strongly objected to by the local authority in particular the council's trees officer because once you start to encroach into the woodland it starts to lose the fact that it's a woodland and it starts to become more of a glorified row of trees um so just i think that's important to know that there was an initial objection from the trees officer because development did encroach into lez king wood and that has been pulled away now um i just thought those two points might be helpful moving forward to chair thank you very much indeed i think councillor right you wanted to raise a point thank you chairman and having listened to both local members who are clearly objecting to the application in the interests of fairness to everyone um i'm surprised that they have been giving tours of the site and no member of the planning committee who's been on those tours has declared it as an interest um i can't ever remember where local members have done this in advance and i don't accept your explanation that it's a covid practice because at the last planning last planning meeting we all well great many of us went out to william where the planning officer gave us a tour of the sites and i would just like to uh hear steven read that you know we are able to proceed with this bearing in light what i've said all right thank you very much yeah let's take advice sir uh mr read uh okay if i may um i think that's a matter for the planning officers rather than the legal officer to deal with okay mr carter then please thank you chair yes thank you councillor right um i gave advice uh to members that we wouldn't be able to accommodate a site visit in the traditional way minibus for example um due to the current restrictions in place due to coronavirus what i did say was that if members wanted to visit the site from public vantage points such as the road or the footpath public footpath then that was a matter for members to determine what whether or not they chose to do that um whether members were then given an explanation or views of the site by the local members is a matter for individual members to consider when it comes to making a decision on the application provided that members come with an open mind to this meeting then in my opinion it doesn't preclude them for making a decision on this application today thank you right thank you very much we didn't have councillor roberts councillor uh mr read would you turn your camera off please holiday chair uh councillor roberts please thank you very much chairman are we into general debate now please we are indeed thank you very much yes i think it's been a really interesting debate and um we've fleshed out a lot of concerns and we've got a lot of inputs um from both offices members of the public etc and i would like to thank mr sexton for the report that he gave it is detailed and i think it does point out to us um the four lines or the concerns that that needed to be looked at um however having listened to um everybody today and especially actually um having listened to the questions of councillor to the hawkins and uh and uh and it comes to the river that i'm losing names um i think that i can't possibly go along with this application and in its present form um i think as has been stated the we know that this site will be developed but i'm afraid there are just too many falls in it at the moment i'm really disappointed that the county council but maybe not surprised that they seem to have taken so little on board and have been so intractable and not listened to the parish council and the residents and uh not even i think maybe today so it seems to me you know the height uh is is far far too high the numbers are far far too high that should have come down in accordance with losing that two hectares of land there's absolutely no excuse hasn't done the hedge concerns the the fact that it hasn't followed um the agreed you know the neighbourhood plan the design plan um that are there to make and encourage us to get it right so chairman i'm hoping very much that it gets refused and i will be supporting the especially the local members and the parish council with their concerns thank you very much all right thank you very much i think we next have councillor heather williamson then councillor carne thank you councillor heather williamson please thank you chairman um i don't want to echo too much what others have said however i am in agreement that it's not suitable in my view for copham i think it does have too much of an urban design feel to it and i think the heights of the building are are unacceptable as others have said um and the we should be giving weight to the vision design statement that's what they're there for in my view but i i do appreciate that this isn't a it is a finely balanced one which people can can see either way but that's my personal views all right thank you councillor carne is that you're muted councillor carne you're muted so can you hear me now yeah fine i've had this before sometimes when i have my earphones on you can't hear that the mutes automatically even though it's not on the on teams uh this complicated site um the i found the visit on site and i i declared that i was on site uh i found the visit very useful um uh perhaps not the way that others might have thought um it was clearly the uh the in terms of the neighbourhood plan i took the advantage after point after screening have a direct look at the labour plan and the design codes at the design state um what i see which is determined the village is defined into various types of of development the village core the village and development in the village core the village the sort of victorian development and modern development and modern development the main point that it makes is that they they're very mixed very mixed type of houses um i don't actually get that the pitch of the roof is very much an issue that is commented on there and that's uh the so that i and they do seem to have been made attempt to make sure that the the development is ready to be mixed um so i actually am not actually of um of the view that it uh is that different from the design design policies uh that that in itself make a refusal in terms of the houses north of rampton road i think the key word there is actually that they are more um they won't be overshadowed the sun will the sun will never be between the houses along rampton road and the these these roads the high pitch roof is rather unusual design uh but it's a small number in a large mixed very mixed uh development i don't think that i can really stand on my heart and think that that would be another reason for refusal so there are reasons which i'm happy about uh which are not uh which we can't be sure about but they all appear to be reasons which are not material considerations uh the the matter of the link into the village well the principle of development has been determined and it was never with the area was never within the the red line so we can't insist on it um the developers indicate that he's willing to they're willing to to do something about that but that's not a matter that we can consider in the application the other thing is the access to the school the divisional site showed access to the school at the far end of the uh site right in the southern part um but the uh now they're talking about taking them out of the site to put the school near it uh i'm unhappy i'm happy about the uncertainty about this but again because it's outside the red line we can't consider that for material application consideration so uh in terms of the the vista that is a clear obstruction but as the photo showed and as was obvious on site the view of the church from the actual site is not terribly dramatic and in fact there are edges in between which could easily grow up so there's no guarantee that that vista will be maintained i don't really think it's going to be sufficient for me to say that that's the reason for refusal um in terms of the proximity to other houses to uh less greenwood we've been um the proposal has removed them again it um i'm not sure that that's adequate reason to refuse in terms of the size of the retention pond we're told that it's adequate right i'm i'm not a sufficient expert to say that it isn't adequate um site the whole site is filled with clay of earseeing clays or maybe boulder clay but parts of it are certainly very impermeable that's but the principal development on that impermeable site has been determined if they if the runoff is going to be adequate for meeting requirements i don't see that we can we're going to be able to say refuse it on that ground so i come to the view that although there are things which i'm not happy about i don't and it perhaps is not a perfect development i think it's a good enough development to it for us to grant permission and i tend to agree with the planning person and i i'm supporting with that but you know when i come to date we have councillor braddenham and then councillor rippith as in chair thank you very much councillor bradham thank you chairman um as always councillor khan comes to us with very uh interesting views um my i find this very difficult because um i there are a lot of things about this development that i find um unfortunate and one of those fundamental ones is because of the change in the outline it's the potential that the development could effectively jeopardize the way in which the land might be used for playing fields in future and but as that is outside the red line that's a difficult argument to make um i wish we could ask that the five houses north of those at rampton road were removed but we have the plan as it is in front of us um i'm also very disappointed that there isn't any internal connectivity to the east to the core of the village again that's outside the red line i'm i'm somewhat astonished that the illustrative master plan was not one of the documents that was um itemized in the outline consent uh and the other one is regarding the houses north of those um which are currently north of rampton road i am really disappointed by the statements you know that goes through from paragraphs 273 to 282 where in each case the reference is given um saying that the back to back distances we'd like are a minimum of 15 meters um and these are all you know approximately 14 meters when in fact they're a bit less you know and then there's you know loss of privacy between some plots but we think this is on balance this is just acceptable and and as uh parrot councillor morris said you know if you always go and say well this on average it's okay then you'll end up with a substandard development and i think that's a great shame um so given that this might go one way or another i would just like to request a condition um if it's possible to do that and i'm i'm not quite sure if it is possible to do it is that if this is approved that we make a condition that wherever possible the existing hedgerows should be maintained in in where in their current location wherever it's possible to do that and if necessary they might be cut shorter because i would like to see you know this council has a commitment to biodiversity and connectivity for um wildlife and so if it's possible perhaps pristata could advise us whether we could put in a condition that mentions maintaining existing hedgerows wherever it's possible to do so and not simply saying oh we can replace them with 300 meters of new ones because that's not quite the same particularly the ones that are on ramped and road which are a very ancient hedgerow which will have um you know wildlife associated with it which would take a long time to just to replace elsewhere could we take advice from Chris Carter on that about to do that thank you Chris ticardo to have your advice on the fish yeah thanks thank you chair um well with your agreement i'd like to ask michael to comment on that because i believe obviously the um hedgerows have been looked at as part of the proposed layouts of this development and therefore there is a reason why it's proposed to remove these hedgerows uh and to plant additional compensatory hedgerow elsewhere so um it may be that michael can provide some advice on that and then i can return to the principle of the condition if needs be all right thank you very much is this excellent yeah so i've been through the documents i can't find a plan that would clearly show existing and uh new hedgerows there is obviously this precautionary ecological report that was required of part of the reserve mass application which does talk about retention of hedgerows but say there's no plan unfortunately in which ones that has been reviewed by our ecology officer and they're satisfied with the details and that would be one of the approved plans um i think it's important to note that the outlying consent has imposed conditions that require the details of hardened soft landscaping and boundary treatments and i think that's where we would start to get a lot more detail um in terms of the hedgerows to be retained and perhaps you know we can impose if if we might as a proof we could perhaps impose an informed informative effects that councillor pratham is is seeking that um that's part of those details to come forward through a potential discharge of conditions applications we would like to see as much of the existing hedgerow on site retained where it is practical to do so so i think perhaps an informative that refers back to those details reserved by condition might be an appropriate mechanism rather than a condition that would be my my view chris thank you thank you chair yes thank you michael for that clarification so i think that's an important point that there are already conditions on the outline permission uh which will help to deal with this so i would be happy to agree that an informative along the lines that michael just set out would be perfectly appropriate to include and um mr kata could i just clarify that that could include both the hedge along rampton road as well as the hedge uh on the let's call it eastern side that skirts around the eastern side of the road because currently if we can be clear at the northeastern extremity of the development currently the road bends around in a curve and that just is described exactly by the current location of a hedge and i would like that to be maintained as well as far as possible elsewhere on that red line um if you zoom in very closely and go to the small print it refers to this as a a low timber a low level timber fence with trellis above um that's to the um north of the the middle block as it were and then down towards the ones nearer the southern edge of the site it refers to a knee rail but wherever it's possible i would like us to maintain that hedge if it was going to be approved yes we can certainly indicate that preference council bradham through the informative and those details as i say will be a requirement to discharge that condition of the outline consent as michael explained so yes okay but it's yes if the rest of the committee want to do that so shall we deal with that now the additional informative that council bradham is suggesting um are we all in favour of that is there anybody against i'm waiting i haven't heard anything no so by affirmation then we have the informative as for your discussion just then um i'd also say that the chat the meeting chat should only be used by members of the committee please um next speaker councillor rippeth is next thank you thank you um for letting me come in again just to highlight i think we can get something better than this i don't think this is good enough and i will be voting against but i'd also like to mention i did come to this meeting afresh at the start and yes it was useful to view the site but i've listened to all the speakers and you know coming to my own conclusions from what they said and um thank you also to michael sexton for the point about the two hectares and the space and not all of that was housing but he did say it would be 20 dwelling short so that makes more 134 i just think that there is an opportunity here um for the developer to come back with something which is more sustainable um not as um cramped in and which offers more of a biodiverse sustainable development thank you very much and the grounds for refusal are that's the rippeth um design all right design height and numbers previously um yes height and numbers and design i think are the strongest ones all right okay thank you very much uh council thane is it you do want to wish this to be well yes gentlemen thank you um i would say briefly that i agree very much with what uh councillor carne said uh i think we both listen very sympathetically to the concerns raised by local people the question at the end of this is whether there are any grounds to refuse based on material considerations in my view clearly there are not i shall be voting for it we also have councillor right wanting to speak chair very much councillor right please thank you for letting me come back chair um i'm not happy with this and i'm inclined to agree with councillor rippeth that i don't think this application is is there you know this is one of our most experienced parish councils they carry a lot of weight in what they say but my main reason for refusal will be policy co h board slash one uh the the damage to the vista from the road um because the houses are too close to les kingwood thank you very much chairman okay thank you right then i think we have councillor daunton right councillor daunton please yes thank you chairman um i've listened very carefully to all the arguments and i'd like to thank the officer and all those who've presented it it's a very difficult site um and the arguments for and against very powerful um i'm very much inclined i i'm concerned about several things first of all the attention or lack of attention it seems to me to be paid to the neighborhood plan and the village design statement um secondly um the characteristics at the height of the building uh on the design element and thirdly i think we've not we have heard about the drainage questions i'm not sure we've paid enough attention to that and i know that there was recent flooding in cocknam and i do have serious concerns about the drainage issues um and as councillor rippon said i i think that we could do better on this site and i i will be voting against it all right thank you councillor richard williams is next right councillor richard williams please oh thank you chair i'll i'll be brief um i've listened with great interest to the bait again i'd like to thank the officer michael's excellent for the report which i thought was an excellent details a very well presented report um as i said i've listened with with interest and a very open mind on this um in the end i think i am concerned about the um cocknam local plan co h1 um not being respected and the uh height of the buildings and the modern design i think at the end are um key factors for me so i plan to vote against thank you and i have no other speakers listed at this time right okay so are we ready then to go to a vote uh let's be very clear that we need to be voting on the basis of the reserved matters and the reserved matters only the principle of development it is not in question the outline is in existence so reserved matters is about layout scale appearance landscaping biodiversity and flood drainage so what i've heard so far is that the main concern is on design the height and numbers of houses in particular um not meeting the requirements of the neighborhood plan co h stroke one we vistas um as well as uh the various uh by various issues about hedges and so on so if we're ready for a vote i assume that we um are going to have mixed feelings on this so the before you go to the vote did you want to take the comments from chris carter and michael sexton who are asking speak are they okay uh mr carter thank you chair um i just wanted to seek a little further clarification on on potential reasons for refusal um the point about height is understood uh the point about numbers um i just wanted to understand a bit more about the issue with the numbers is it members feel that the uh the scheme is is too dense that the uh trying to fit too many homes too close to the wood is it that the numbers of homes are blocking the view of the church that's identified in in the neighborhood plan just so we can be specific about the point on numbers the point about height um i think both mark and i understand um clearly at this stage could be yeah well numbers i thought the argument was about it should be pro rata given the reduction anyway well there's no there's no we're doing golden's chair sorry there's no there's no um there's no policy to say that that should be the case what we need to be considering is whether the number of dwellings proposed uh delivers uh an appropriate design response to this site uh not simply um it should be pro rated uh because of the piece of land that's been removed from from the site since the outline fiction so no hang on a minute doesn't that um come into the vista argument them well that that's what i'm asking the committee to verify is it the house specifically suggests is co age stroke one in the neighborhood plan would be uh so so if i made paraphrase is that the committee considers that the number of dwellings uh within the reduced site area causes harm to that vista that might not be there if it was a lower number of dwellings is that what is that what we're saying that's right because they've put them closer to les king wood which has obscured the vista that would otherwise have been there okay that's fine and therefore the committee considers that that outweighs any other any other benefits along with the height issue as well well in combination with the other factors okay that's fine thank you that's the clarification i needed thank you mr sexton did you still wish to speak um my my comments are going to be about numbers well because there is obviously the established permission for up to 154 dwellings um i think i think it's being backed by my conservatism because this is very spacious development and if we get very prescriptive about numbers we may see an application come back in that has got much less me as a space although still within requirements obviously residential space standards may be lost should develop and come forward with a more ground form but i think i think yeah what what's been related to chris would help us if that was a reason for refusal okay okay members could everyone mute please there's some background noise at the moment okay so the proposal before you or the recommendation before you is for approval plus conditions i'm going to do a roll call um vote in just a moment so if you want to approve it you're in favor if you want to refuse it you're against uh and if you want to abstain you abstain so i will now run through uh the list so uh council bread against chairman yep council calm approve okay thank you councillor dawnton against okay council thane in for council Hawkins against and council ripeth against thank you council Roberts against chairman thank you thank you council head over limbs against and that's the richard williams against council riots against you and my vote is four so it's three four and eight against the application is therefore refused thank you very much and we move on then oh we what time is it do you want to take a break members yes i think that would be a good idea yeah 10 minutes and back a quarter to one is that all right aron are you switching off aron can you just confirm that the feed is off please thank you very much share you're now live again thank you very much and welcome back to south cams district council planning committee um we're now moving on to agenda item six which is on page 101 of your agendas um this is application s 4243 stroke 19 fl is at ultra park land to the west of neel drive at ultra park so the proposal is for the erection of two new private residential blocks with linking and central element comprising 138 revised from 144 student rooms and associated facilities a resubmission of application s 3983 stroke 18 fl you will recall that we have recently dealt with an application which has your most identical design the applicant is marching dale developments limited key considerations will be covered by the presenting officer this is not a departure the application is brought to committee because the community council has objections the agenda says that the parish council does as well but in fact the parish council chose not to comment so that's incorrect the recommendation is approval subject conditions and an s 106 agreement presenting officer is luke simpson would you do give us your presentation please mr simpson thank you chair could you i can see that yep okay great the proposal is for the erection of two new private residential blocks comprising 138 student rooms and the site is com for an orchard park which you are very likely be very familiar with and the application site is located within the development framework of orchard park and it's situated to the north of cambridge south of the a 14 and it forms part of a plot known as com for because it's described as com for in the orchard park design guide spd so the proposal would provide 138 student rooms and associate facilities there are two linear blocks linked via a bridging element as you'll see shortly orientated east to west the development would have a maximum of five stories and a maximum height of approximately 14.2 meters block a and the link section across the bridging element would provide 100 self-contained rooms with desk study space en suite cooking facilities with communal television games rooms at ground floor level block b would provide 38 cluster rooms whereby individual rooms benefit from desk and study space is non-sweets but cooking facilities with occupants of this block utilizing they'd have shared kitchen facilities and so there'd also be three accessible rooms there'd be a reception area at ground floor and a separate management and warden's office at ground floor level so this is a sui generous use meaning that if the owner wanted to change the use to residential for example the negative full planning application in order to do that they couldn't just change to a residential use from student accommodation there are seven car parking spaces proposed and these are all at ground floor level so there's no basement car park as there was with the recently approved scheme there'd be 145 secure cycle parking spaces and there will be a footpath provided to the self the scheme includes landscaping and the development will provide accommodation for local educational institutions in particularly sorry in particular CRC Cambridge Regional College who have written a letter indicating an interest in the proposals and who have been involved in formulating the proposals as far as I understand so by way of background this scheme is one of two resubmit resubmit schemes on this site so as members will be aware the two previous schemes one for a built-in rent and one for student accommodation were both refused last year for reasons pertaining to design landscaping and ecology the applicant had appealed the previous decisions and these were to proceed by way of a public inquiry however as you may well know planning commission has recently been granted on this site for 80 built-in rent flats under S slash 4191 slash 1 9 slash FL I believe that was in August upon the grant of planning commission the applicant withdrew the appeals so those appeals are no longer proceeding so this current scheme is the remaining resubmit scheme that still needs to be determined and should be determined on its own merits as well as the chair alluded to the design of the proposed development is very similar to the previously approved built-in rent scheme and officers consider that all of the previous reasons for refusal have been addressed as was the case in respect the recently approved scheme so there are a lot of similarities between this presentation and the last presentation but I will go through all the design issues again so this is an extract from the Orchard Park design guide SPD which shows the Comfort site it envisages heights of 12 meters of between 12 meters and 15 meters for the areas of land to the east of the site as you'll know there's no prescribed height for the application site which is this area to the west although the SPD itself the text refers to nine meter height for other blocks so the only reasonable conclusion is that the nine meter height relating to Comfort can only reasonably relate to this area here this slide shows the proposed layout on the left and the previously refused layout on the right as you can see there have been significant revisions to the design of the proposed development so now we've got an east west orientation as opposed to a north south orientation so that was previously one of the reasons for refusal we weren't happy with the orientation of blocks purely for design reasons because most of the development fronting the A14 is orientated east west so with the introduction of this bridging element they have overcome that aspect to the reason for refusal as far as offices are concerned there's also a significant increase in the width of the pedestrian link so the plan on the on the right hand side showing previously refused development clearly has a much narrower pedestrian link whereas this has been widened significantly and the distance between the development and the residential dwelling to the south has also been significantly increased as you can see given the revisions to the design of the layout there's significantly increased area available for planting and landscaping as well so previously the scheme was refused partly on the basis of landscaping and the fact that we didn't think that the applicant could achieve a high quality landscaping scheme that was viable we we no longer think we think they've addressed that reason for refusal and that the landscaping proposals can be required by condition and and that actually now they are able to achieve a high quality landscaping scheme which is viable previously the previous scheme would have required significant revisions to design so you don't they'd actually have to move the buildings so so we couldn't have conditioned it previously whereas now we're happy that they've overcome that reason for refusal this slide shows a section looking west with the proposed development at the bottom and the previously refused development at the top as you can see the setback from the neighbouring properties to the south has been significantly increased as I referred to earlier there's also been an increase in setback at fifth floor level which is well as I said the height parameter in the SPD is nine meters for this plot and this this development is approximately 14.2 meters but we as planning officers consider that that impact the impact of the height has been mitigated firstly by the increase distance between the blocks and the residential development to the south but also with this increased setback at the floor level which mitigates the impact so you can see the height is actually fairly similar between the residential development to the south and the four story element of the development earlier I referred to the orientation of proposed development this slide shows how the revised orientation translates when viewed from the south so the slide at the bottom is the revised proposal and the slide at the top shows the previously refused development with two blocks which were orientated north to south you'll note that the development now has an east west orientation as required by the SPD the bridging design that they've used serves to also create more active frontages to the south where the pedestrians drawn in to the entrances below there's also there are increased well an increased amount of fenestration which creates natural surveillance for the pedestrian link which we think is also an improvement to the scheme these are the proposed elevations no northern elevation facing the A14 includes additional windows so that's that's an improvement previously they were quite blank elevations so they've improved that slightly as well as you'll be aware all park community council objected to the proposed development the objections are very similar to the objections made in relation to the build rent scheme all the objections are addressed in the committee report of particular note the current scheme does not include any viability evidence so there's no affordable housing requirement so the applicant hasn't submitted any viability evidence so all the all the points relating to viability aren't actually relevant to this proposed development in addition many of the objections centre on parking in transport however there would be a clause in the section 106 agreement which would require that the tenancy agreement includes a restriction on car ownership with the exception of disabled students so none of the students would be able to own a car and that is a common approach taken for proposals for student accommodation elsewhere in the UK including in recent appeal decisions so it's not an unusual approach and it's enforceable as well with regard to the area of the pedestrian pedestrian link which falls within the ownership of the community council this is not part of the proposed development and is therefore not within the red line boundary albeit the developer is committed to providing the funding for this part of the footpath link the LPA will make these funds available to the parish council should they wish to develop this part of the link in accordance with the design guide spd so this slide just runs through the differences between the refuse development and the current proposal so there's been a reduction in the number of rooms for 151 238 as I mentioned there's been an increase in the distances between the blocks and the residential development to the south quite significant increases 5 to 11 meters and 9 to 21 meters and there's also been an increase a further increase at the fifth floor level as a result of decreased distances the area around the footpath link has been been increased as I've discussed we've got the bridging element which creates the east west orientation improved active frontiers and elevational treatments an increased area available for landscaping so these are the key material considerations in the determination of this application in terms of the principle of development it's considered that the principle is acceptable planning commission has recently been granted as you know for residential development on this site with regard to design landscaping and ecology the reasons previous reasons for refusal have all been addressed I haven't mentioned the ecology but the previous application was refused on partly on the basis that the required survey work in relation to a population of lizards which are a protected species had not been undertaken that has now been undertaken and the survey has been submitted so the ecologist is satisfied subject to conditions that the ecology reason for refusal has fallen away so all of the other considerations relevant material considerations are discussed in detail in the committee report so in terms of officer conclusions we consider the proposed development accords of all relevant development plan policies as set out in the committee report I think with the built rent scheme we we did identify some minor conflicts I know it's a bit of balancing exercise whereas this scheme we consider that all development plan relevant development plan policies are complied with there'd be a conflict with the orchard park design guide SPD in terms of the height parameter but we consider that's mitigated by the setback of fifth floor level which you know is exactly the same situation as for the build to rent proposal which was approved previously so in terms of design this is actually almost identical to the previously approved scheme is probably actually an improvement because I think block B is smaller than the previously approved scheme so it's actually it's actually better in terms of design than the previous scheme officers consider consider that there are other material considerations which were in favour of the development which include the social and economic benefits associated with the provision of student accommodation and the provision of 55 units towards the council's housing land supply just because we mentioned housing land supply it doesn't there's not an issue with that it's obviously a relevant consideration to consider the benefits associated with the provision of housing and there's a requirement to continually monitor and update the housing land supply that's why we're mentioning it no other reason there would be a as well there'd be various section one I six contributions and these are set out in the appendage agreed heads of term so they will be agreed in principle with the with the applicant they include contributions to open space indoor meeting space and a cycleway a contribution to the cycleway link on Histon Road I noted previously in relation to the build rent scheme there were a lot so there was quite a substantial debate about contributions and viability that isn't the case here we don't have a viability case and the applicant has committed to making all of the required contributions in relation to this proposed development as I've mentioned there'll also be a car ownership restriction which would be with it controlled and outlined in the section 106 so on that on that basis officers consider that the development complies with all relevant development plan policies and there aren't any material considerations which indicate that a decision should be made other than in accordance with the development plan and therefore we recommend that the planning commissioners granted subject to the conditions in section 106 contributions as set out in the in the officer report thank you all right thanks very much um points of clarification please Chairman we have councillor Roberts wanted to speak to him councillor Roberts please thank you very much chairman and through you chairman to the officer um I have a sense of deja vu here um during our last month and I'm sure the officers feel a bit the same however um can you just have clarification on first one thing the uh community council is still objecting is that right because I I thought I heard at the first that community council wasn't objecting now but I mean all the paperwork is there saying that they object to it second point is um haven't been on the south camps for long enough to have remembered the idea behind Orchard Park uh the officers agree that actually we are getting a very disproportionate and unbalanced community now here with the various applications and I'm not at all sure how we can ensure that the implementation of no cars um to the students who would be there can actually happen because this isn't a building that's been built by one of the university colleges is it um and therefore it's a private uh development seemingly going to be used by colleges and and given all the problems that Orchard Park is already suffering from in um parking problems how is that actually going to be police thank you very much chairman thank you okay uh thank you councillor the yeah yeah the first point you raised is about the community council that yes that they are objecting um it's the it's Hisston parish council who aren't objecting um yep thank you when a clarification um that Hisston obviously objected to the previous proposal but they didn't comment on this so they're not supporting but they didn't comment um the I I'm not really sure what your your point is in relation to you said the development would be disproportionate to the community I think yeah I assume you're talking the community council is pointing out very much that um whereas um they are looking to be having much more family homes um what is happening there is you are getting more and more and more applications being approved for single occupancy you know rooms basically okay um well I don't I don't really see how that's necessarily an issue I mean in policy terms I don't think we have any policies which require um certain 10 years in certain locations as such um I would also say that actually um this will take some of the pressure off some of the um traditional residential development in auction park um which probably presumably accommodates um some students um so this provides purpose built student accommodation so it's going to actually take some of that pressure away from from auction park which would potentially um be be beneficial in in the terms which you suggest um because it'll free up some of the housing stock for potentially families um so yeah I don't think there's a policy basis for uh refusing on on the grounds that it's out keeping in social terms um I think yeah policy HQ one has provisioned for social and some of that so with me you're suddenly having a bath well I I've got a policy in front of me but there are there are aspects to policy HQ one which allow for um well require consideration of social cohesion I don't think that's how it's particularly out of phrase but um you could hang something on that if you if you wanted to but as far as I'm concerned I'm satisfied that the development is in keeping and there's no reason to consider that student accommodation in this area would would um be out keeping in sort of social terms um in terms of your other points in relation to the car parking the um that is that can be controlled because the section one and six agreement will require that the tenancy agreement which which students sign up to stipulates that they can't own a car unless they're disabled um that is a common approach taken to student accommodation um nationwide so in in many instances um section one and six agreements are used to control car ownership in that way um so it's it's not uncommon and there's a recent appeal decision in Southampton where the inspector took the same approach um so it you know that as far as we're concerned that's enforceable fine good thank you very much uh next is the Bradenum please thank you chairman yeah I'm sorry I'm with you um so two things um one was I just wanted to seek some clarification on sort of principles uh and the other was a particular one so given that the previous approval for the bill to rent has already been approved I just wanted to clarify if this were also to be approved for student accommodation could the applicant simply choose which which uh application they chose to deliver that's the bottom oops is now exiting thank you and the second question was um at the um southwest of the corner of the site uh there's reference on the site plan to the pedestrian link outside the applicant's ownership for indicative purposes only can you just clarify I'm sure it's in the papers somewhere but is there some uh confirmation somewhere that that will be um secured as a as a route act onto I think it's chieftain way isn't it yes um so firstly yes the developer uh can implement either consent um secondly the the section 106 agreement uh includes provision to provide funds to the orchard park and the council in relation to that part of the um pedestrian link should they wish to uh construct it in accordance with the orchard park design guide spd but it's false outside of the applicant's ownership um so that they're only responsible for the development which falls within their ownership so that piece of land is in the ownership of orchard park so it's for them to develop if they want to okay thank you thank you yeah well I think I'm probably next and then Councillor Richard Williams after that okay what's that saying then my question related to the uh the setback um I think the my impression is that this has been setback significantly to the south from the buildings to the south on the fifth floor but actually these that refused application I'm not quite clear because I haven't done the comparison whether that setback is any different from the uh from the other application which has now been approved and indeed coming this today your sound was breaking up there uh Councillor did you get that no could you would you like me to repeat Simpson thank you yes you could yes my question related principally to the setback to the north which used from that which was shown on the original it's not quite this setback is different from that in the I'm sorry I'm having trouble with my mute button going on and off I will try one more time if I'm my may chairman concerns the setback from the busy a 14 to the north which has been reduced as against the refused application I think it may be the same as in the alternative application I'm just wondering whether uh that is an issue which is relevant a material consideration here given the amount of work that's been going on beside the a 14 and the lack of access to that edge of the a 14 other than by taking this this land here is that a factor that we should consider I are you I firstly the setback from the a 14 is very similar to the previously refused application I think it's slightly increased but that relates to the an issue with the application site boundary so it's had to be revised very slightly but um we're we're perfectly satisfied that the proximity and relationship between the development of the a 14 is acceptable in in policy terms um that's that wasn't hasn't cropped up previously um as as an issue and it certainly wasn't a reason for refusal in relation to the uh refused scheme and I think the uh orientation of the building relate buildings well is one building in relation to the a 14 is very similar to uh if not identical um in terms of proximity to the previously approved built a rent scheme as well thank you for that chairman I think next we have councillor Richard Williams thank you very much councillor Williams please thank you very much chair I've got three points um of clarification for the officer um the first is about the orientation of the building again so this north south east west issue on the diagrams we were shown I just just want to sort of clarify that of course there's the bar going across between the two buildings running north south but of course the bottom of that would be opened I think on the diagram it was it was shaded in gray but of course it will be open and looking at the building from the a 14 the north elevation um it was a one-dimensional drawing we got but of course given the perspective and the depth the link would actually look a lot smaller in in in reality than than it did on on that drawing um so I I I just still have a an issue with this being classified as definitely east west when there's a strong north south element to it um okay on the on on the question of parking and just to note a couple of points I mean seven spaces doesn't seem very much I know students well students are not supposed to have cars but students often do but on travel days um when students are arriving and leaving 155 students will create quite a lot of cars um so I'm not quite sure where they'd go and just to pick up on my final point on what councillor Roberts talked about um I think it was in the presentation this social benefits of student housing more cited as a material consideration well I I would ask the question what about the social benefits then to Orchard Park because of social benefits of the development are a material consideration and I think we have we can legitimately look at the social benefits or disbenefits to the community in Orchard Park from having a large transient um population centre okay uh on the I suppose on the orientation point uh I'm not really sure if that's a question or not but I think the way I see it is that the uh the bridging element introduces um a building which has the appearance of being east west orientated as opposed to north south so it's a significant improvement um what you know most of the development fronting the A4 well backing onto the A14 is orientated east west um that's that's the reason why we wanted the east west orientation in the first place that's that's the reason part of the reason why the spd envisages it envisages it um but it also envisages east west orientation for noise attenuation purposes but there is no um noise um issue here and and there never has been so so the only reason it was refused previously was on character grounds and I'm satisfied that the the bridging element is a significant improvement and and it does result with a development which is in keeping with that predominant east west character um in terms of the parking uh yeah valid point about um end of term beginning of term uh we would well we have proposed a condition in relation to a drop off pickup management plan and I think that was requested by the local highway authority so so there is um a mechanism to control the impacts associated with um the beginning and end of term and moving on to your final point which is a good point um yeah this economic environment on social impacts of development um are often material they are material considerations in the determination of finding applications and they can um go either way uh so there could be environmental benefits or um this benefits so in terms of the social benefits I I I think there are social benefits through um supporting um local education institutions and I think that are in providing housing for young people involved in those institutions and I think that's a significant benefit associated with the scheme I don't see any social disadvantages um but you know something for members to consider um and if they do then yeah they need to weigh that um do do those disadvantages outweigh or warrant a decision other than in accordance with the development plan policies that's a that's a difficult question but I certainly haven't identified any so um hopefully that answers your question all right thank you very much gentlemen we have one other speaker listed it's um oh Councillor Bradman Councillor Bradman you already had the speaking thank you very much yes it is a new point thank you um sometimes these things um evolve as you hear what other people say um so my concern was uh as it is for any development at Orchard Park is to do with the car parking and I wanted to clarify um whether there who would so who would be responsible you you said there was a management plan for pick up and drop off days but who will be responsible for monitoring the car parking and also how will that be enforced because if it falls to for example civil enforcement um or the police that's not going to be done and I just I just wanted to check how it's you know it's rather difficult it's rather different to a situation in Cambridge colleges where there are sanctions that they that can be applied because the people are in the college I'm just wondering how you think that might be uh done because it would not be appropriate for that to fall to the parish count the community council okay yeah so as I mentioned there's um the reason it can be controlled by a section 1 and 6 agreement is because we can control the content of the tenancy agreement which applies directly to the site um so what we're saying is that there should be specific uh clauses included in the tenancy agreement which would require that students don't own a motor vehicle unless they're disabled and set out the implications which are also specified in the section 106 agreement um should they reach that requirement so I without I don't know the specific detail let me just have a quick look sorry my point was that if they simply say no I don't have a car and then park it somewhere else on Orchard Park there's very little way anybody could monitor that well it's the same as any enforcement issue so if someone raises it as an issue with us then we would approach the management company um and refer to the Y6 agreement and um action should be taken in accordance with the contract which should set out the implications for not complying with um with that requirement okay all right thank you very much um okay members I've got two public speakers uh to call um once we've done that I'll be adjourning for half an hour for lunch um so just so you're aware so um can I call Mr. Fulton is Mr. Fulton with us please yeah hello afternoon so good afternoon uh councillor Bradnip has already addressed the point I was going to raise and that is that the uh the application under consideration today does not actually improve a functional pedestrian link between yield drive and shift in lane yeah okay okay hang on a minute uh because we you know we have to deal with this but process uh process uh Mr. Fulton can we call him so uh is now exiting uh sorry about that uh you know the process don't you so we've got three three minutes and uh whenever you're ready you can start that please thank you sure thank you I would just say that councillor Bradnip has already addressed the point I was going to raise that the application before the committee today does not actually provide for a functional pedestrian and cycle link between yield drive and shift in lane but I think that's been adequately covered by officers um that was my chief concern um and um I don't think it complies with the requirement in the SPD but I'll thank the committee for the time and I'll let you move on to other speakers uh well well thank you very much for that uh Mr. Fulton thank you uh uh uh second speaker is on behalf of the applicant and it's Mr. Watson it's Mr. Watson with us please yes thank you chairman hello Mr. Watson hello afternoon welcome um you know the the uh process you've got three minutes so whenever you're ready thank you very much and thank you for the opportunity to speak um as members are aware through the presentation um a proposal to deliver 80 built rent apartments was approved on this site in August like that proposal this application for the student accommodation is also a resubmission following an earlier refusal which had raised concerns over the scale and massing of the buildings the quality of the landscaping and a lack of a protected species survey in approving the amended built rent scheme in August the committee agreed that an appropriate protected species survey had now been submitted and that demonstrated that there was no harm the reduction the length and the footprint of the buildings and the increased separation which results between the proposals and the buildings to the south as it's been walked through today and the presentation had improved and that was now acceptable and subject to appropriately word and conditions the committee agreed that an appropriate landscaping scheme could be delivered as is noted in paragraph 75 of your austere report and again as has been presented this morning this scheme is very similar to built rent scheme the main differences are that the eastern block built block b is actually said even further back from the seven boundaries and the previously approved built rent scheme there are more windows facing south addressing the footpath link and of course the building is said divided to provide student rooms rather than flats as with the built proposal therefore officers believe these changes have addressed the previous concerns and it's recommended for approval whilst car parking provision was not a previous reason for refusal it was debated at some length when we considered the built rent scheme in August and it's been raised again this morning um by its nature this scheme is quite different in terms of the need for control of side parking there's a much lower demand for parking and there's a far greater ability to control the behavior of the tenants in this case a section 106 agreement is proposed as you've heard that will ensure that the tenancy agreements which are entered into the institute by the students before they can take a residency makes clear that they are not allowed to own a car and bring a car to the site as is noted in paragraph 138 of your office report the county council's transport and highways development management teams are both very happy with its approach and its approach which is is used elsewhere in conclusion paragraph 61 of the NPTF advises that it's necessary for local planning authorities to have regards the need to provide housing for a range of people including students who do form an important part of local community this proposal would provide much needed high quality dedicated student accommodation at the same time it would assist in easing the pressure on and loss of family housing to the multiple occupancy market we really do therefore hope that the community will feel able to support the officer's recommendation and to grant permission for this scheme thank you very much right thank you thank you Mr Watson hang on hang on a minute there may well be some questions I think um do we have questions councillor thing councillor may well be having some difficult question from councillor Roberts all right thank you very much councillor Roberts please um thank you again chairman and through you chairman I would like to ask the applicant um in your previous encounters with South Cams about these sites um you were going to go to appeal and part of your appeal argument was going to be that South Cams District Council does not have a five-year land supply is that still your stance and would you use that again um if we refuse this and it went to appeal um now come on we have to only ask questions which are relevant to the actual planning application where man it's terribly relevant well I don't think that's given pre-meeting advice a little while ago well indeed I mean but you know there's no response the applicant can give us an answer or can Mr Watson if he wishes to give an answer I'm happy to answer if you'd like me to yes councillor um this application as I think your your officer pointed out is in accordance with the development plan so where applications are in accordance with the development plan we don't need to try and run other arguments that would support the application the five-year land supply argument was to do with specifically with the appeal where the council was arguing that our proposal did not um accord with all of the development plan policies and as is a often used approach where land supply is let's say a question um if a councillor is found not to have a land supply a five-year land supply then it would um assist an inspector if we were to appeal um to be able to say well even if I take the view there are some harmful impacts from this development it doesn't accord with all the council policies the fact you don't have a land supply um would outweigh that now this is a total different position and we haven't made that case in respect of this application because it's fully in accordance with the development plan to answer the second part of your question if in six months eight months time we happened to be down the the road and we were at an appeal at that point we re-looked at this and the council you know didn't have a land supply it had an adverse appeal decision in the intervening period it's quite possible we would raise it you know we would have to raise it but it's it's not a part of our case at the present time it's not what you said before though is it you said thank you thank you very much for that thank you okay um do we have any more speakers councillor saying I have no other speakers listed oh wait a minute uh councillor Richard Williams all right okay councillor Richard Williams please thank you chair um just a quick one for Mr Watson um just picking up on the points I made and and councillor Braden have made can I just ask Mr Watson how he would imagine the um plan for pickup and drop-off management and traffic to be enforced yes certainly um well depending on if if this scheme went forward and it was for example taken up and it was wholly used by Cambridge Regional College it's likely they would be managing it and as part of the um condition that that Luke Simpson referred to would we either we or the college or the management company if it wasn't being run by the college would have to submit details of how they would cover these points now when I went to university many many years ago even then this was a big issue and you actually had to book a time for your parents to arrive with your car packed up and they would say we've got 10 spaces or we've got five spaces and you have to be there over the weekend whether it was the Friday the Saturday Sunday so I would imagine something like that would be done where it would be managed so people arriving and leaving would be staggered and if people you know you're just going to get the odd person who who who um causes the problem and arrives at the wrong time but that that's I believe the way they do it all right thank you very much I've councillor Khan and councillor Braden right okay and then that's the end of that after that thank you so councillor Khan please um just whilst I've got you councillor Khan are you going to want to speak as a local member or are you happy for the debate no I'm not intended to speak as a local member thank you very much sorry I really wanted to there was I am a local member for for Orchard Park but I was going to say that the local council community council was concerned about where the students were coming from what sort of students are proposed you haven't had you any clarity about who would be where the students would come from what the arrangements would be who would be the management or is that completely open at this stage uh yes or cans that the application was put together with support from Cambridge Regional College and you'll have seen there is a letter of support with this application that they prepared um they're not obligated to take this if we get planning commission today we hope you know we hope they would still want to do that and they would be down to that uh the owner of the the site to decide whether he goes ahead with the bill to rent scheme or or this but assuming it was um Cambridge Regional College my understanding is very much that they are trying to boost overseas students to a degree who will come over and when people are coming from overseas they expect um a proper standard of accommodation I think what I was in discussion with them was told that many years ago you could you could get someone one of the lecturers would would give someone a room and they would have a shared property but that doesn't work anymore if people are coming and paying fees for a course they need proper accommodation so I believe the majority of people would be would be coming from further afield okay thank you very much and uh Councillor Bradman thank you chairman um I wanted to moot possibly with Mr Watson or well I'll try you to begin with um you mentioned about the fact that the parking would be controlled by means of the tenancy agreement and as you described you said I think I heard you correctly saying um that it would they must be they must confirm that they either don't have a car or they won't bring it on site now of course of course they're not going to be able to bring it on site because there's only seven car parking spaces the concern is whether they bring it on to Orchard Park and I'm just wondering is there any scope to say that to extend that exclusion zone because otherwise the police or whoever chooses to enforce will not be able to enforce it yeah that's a good point it's probably the way I I spoke what I meant was that they should not be coming and taking a tenancy at this building if they are proposing to bring a car with them and whether that's on site or in the road next door they shouldn't be bringing it with them it's it needs to be framed in such a way that it's enforceable if they choose to park off-site but on Orchard Park yeah I suspect there will be a radius of how far away they may be allowed yeah okay well they're not allowed a car at all oh that's the point actually if they've got one at home at their parents' house and remind them indeed but yeah you haven't got the answer to that obviously okay so thank you very much Mr Watson thank you let you go now and members I think we'll take a break now for lunch so we'll take a half an hour and we'll be back again in action at 10 past two please Chairman can I ask have we not got anybody from the parish council? No the parish council chose not of the community council chose not to speak thank you Chairman they were invited obviously okay Aaron are we closing down please Aaron have you confirmed closure is Aaron still with us sorry chair I've been having issues with my microphone thank you very much chair we are now live again thank you very much welcome back to South Commons District Council Planning Committee we're currently dealing with the application at Orchard Park we've already heard the officers report and the contributions from members of public and interested parties we're now moving on to the debate on Orchard Park so members over to you who would like to start the debate do we have any speakers sorry Chairman I've registered to speak yeah it's with Councillor Thane you can I just check if Councillor Thane is operational who's he's been having trouble with you I'm not sure if I'm operational okay fine noted Councillor Bradley on them please thank you thank you Chairman I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that we've had one application for one sort of thing back in August which was approved and now we've got this application and in many ways I feel this application looks preferable to the previous one we had but I think it still has the potential to visit quite a lot of problems on the community at Orchard Park and I think it's a shame that they haven't been able to attend I quite appreciate they give their time you know voluntarily and this may not be a convenient time and they've given such detailed objections on this site in the past I think it's not unreasonable that they didn't attend again but I just think it's a shame because what we know is that last time they spoke very powerfully about how much they how hard they have tried to build a community at Orchard Park and how difficult that has been when the developments that have been approved have encouraged a development of transience and you know they make a little headway with something like Marmalade Lane and they've worked so hard on the community council and then this sort of application could damage that community again not for any bad wishes of the people involved or living in the development but just because they won't have a commitment to the community so I think it's a great shame having said that I don't think that now there are sufficient reasons to refuse this application and so I and because I think it's actually preferable to the one we looked at before I think I'm still holding my judgment but I'm hovering in the middle thank you leave you hovering there I can't see any more speakers so I think anyone else can come on again perhaps as local member yes I'm commenting the this application in terms of its physical structure and relationship and the problems and the previous appeals which were withdrawn meets all the requirements in the same way as the one that's approved in August in terms of which are retracting from the development to the south its size and its location and it's having a different orientation most of the concern appears to be the fact that it's student accommodation and yes we have the alternative of either independent accommodation or for small small studio flats for working people or student accommodation which is a larger number both of these are potential problems to traffic but we've been told from experience elsewhere that the sort of condition they plan to apply to it is acceptable so I don't think we've got a grounds for turning down the application on the basis of the type of development that the proof in terms of much better than his landscaping than even the previous one which has been approved and the social type of students you might have is not something that really is an issue in terms of planning consideration so I don't really see what grounds one would have to turn it down I think it's one that we would be wanting to approve even if the local community is concerned about it and I know they are concerned about it so that's my view on it. All right thank you very much. We have Councillor Roberts and then Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you Councillor Roberts please. Thank you Chairman my sense of deja vu continues and grows I'm sorry but I'm just amazed that it's quite clear that this is going to cause a real bad slant to Orchard Park and I've been on the council long enough to remember like you Chairman when Orchard Park was basically just still in dream shape and it was certainly not to have it as a you know lots and lots of very tiny apartment type one room being you know the bed it sits it was to have a community and I'm just I'd be absolutely amazed that members are going along with this sort of application it's going to cause problems and that I absolutely no doubt just by the very numbers of students and I'm just wondering how many students will actually go here because if you ask any of the private schools who've got boarding in Cambridge now all their overseas students most of which are Chinese I think are not coming back they have no idea when they're going to come back so actually what happens to these flats should the student population decrease and I mean the university is concerned about this who is going to get these places and because it's not university owned and controlled it's an it's a it's an open area isn't it to do anything and anything with they will fill them this developer will fill them and he will have to fill them but exactly with whom is he going to fill them if he isn't students and the parking we already heard we heard at the last much time which was for the other application when it came back to us about the huge amounts of parking problems in Orchard Park now I don't care what anybody says about oh well the restrictions on students they will have cars they they need to go and see their parents they need to go and see their friends they need to go up to London and they're not all going to get on bikes or buses or trains and and we are going to have a problem so it seems to me it's horrendous that a district council can actually not realising the harm that is going to be done with this against any perceived good I mean it's it's a nightmare we are going to turn Orchard Park very sadly and it's all there on the in the ruins we are going to turn Orchard Park into the ghetto of the future and it won't be very far many decades down down the road that we do that I mean we just shouldn't be allowing this okay thank you very much councillor Payne do we have councillor Heather Williams all right lovely Heather Williams please councillor hello thank you chairman um so I've listened very carefully to the representations that have been made um and and I think the officer's done a good job of putting the case together for us um but I for myself I don't think that significant amount has changed in well not enough has changed since we originally looked at this and I'm looking at page 113 paragraph 72 of our reasons for the refusal last time and one of which was that it didn't fit in the surrounding area because of its height the three-story residential development directly to the south of the application site and obviously this is still a still a very large dominating building for that area and it's there are lots of things that are are undesirable in it for example odours and other things that are referenced with the drainage concerns and and what have you um you know the students having to deal with this just having to deal with the smells that have been warned about that's that's undesirable but they're probably not material um I'll take your steer on that chairman about noise and um levels etc that have been raised through the report but it it's just it hasn't changed enough it's not good enough in our representation last time we said that it did not represent high quality design um and I still stand by that personally in in my view and I will be voting against um and not putting this on the residents there thank you very much councillor Richard Williams councillor Richard Williams please thank you thank you very much chair um I speaking for myself I I still have concerns about the orientation of the building I'm not convinced it's it's really north-south or um east west rather I think there is at least as strong a case so I'll give it to north-south as east west it really is a matter of judgment and I I I make the judgment that it's still predominantly north south um just to go back to a point that that we've already discussed but to pick up on something that councillor Khan said I mean the you know the impact of a development on the occupiers of neighboring land can be a material consideration it clearly can be um and that can include the impact on the the neighboring community so so I think the concern about um student accommodation and the development of orchard park the councillor roberts and councillor brandon and various others I think have flagged up I think it was councillor brandon as well um these that can be a material consideration and that is a consideration for me um I think it's a very important consideration thank you chairman I have no other speakers listed right lovely thank you very much uh in that case we are chairman I now have councillor nick right oh councillor right please thank you chairman and I just wanted to add like councillor roberts I've sat on quite a lot of these applications at orchard park and she you and myself all remember the point of the buildings at the front of the development against the a14 which is they were to have industrial use to screen the residents behind now you know putting students in this is not it's not that sort of use and they will have to suffer the air pollution from the road the noise pollution from the road and the argument that CRC have expressed an interest baffles me slightly as most of their students come from the village colleges locally and I don't understand why they're looking for uh you know accommodation which you know which is slightly baffling so I have my concerns about this application too and we'll be voting accordingly thank you very much all right thank you very much there is our last speaker yes thanks well perhaps I might have a word then um members you have to keep in mind that this has already been through a refusal process and the officer is very clearly telling us that uh the grounds for a refusal that we had previously in their opinion has been have been met um on that basis it seems very difficult to actually find uh actual grounds now a number of you are saying that you want to vote for refusal um I'm not clear on what grounds that refusal would be so if somebody would like to give me some flesh on that I'm assuming in part we've had the issue of the height which you you still feel um is um the material here yeah height council williams has come up you go ahead thank you chairman um I think paragraph 72 page 113 I think what you're hearing from a lot of us and I'm sure members will correct me if I'm wrong is that not there hasn't been sufficient change from the application in our view to actually deal with the problems that we faced last time um and our last time we stated in the opinion of the local planning authority the scale siting amassing of the proposed five-story development would not be in keeping the surrounding area and in particular the three-story residential development directly to the south of the application site it then goes on to reference page 34 the orchard park design guidance spd and policy hq one of the design principles now I appreciate that others may have a different view and and officers have a different view that that actually that has been suffice but for some of us it hasn't been and therefore I'd say the grounds are very very similar okay thank you got that I'd agree with that and I don't know whether we could add parking chairman because I think the parking is going to be a huge huge problem well I don't think we can actually the highways people are raising no objections and yeah we've been through this a number of times today uh there's clearly contractual uh arrangements in place that's that says people cannot have a car there so it's very difficult you know we can't second guess that if it's in place it's in place um so hang on uh mr carter perhaps you could give us your advice on this yes thank you chair um Stephen Reed may be uh looking to make the same point but um I think we need to think about consistency in the decision making and as the case officer set out this scheme uh whilst there are minor differences is uh very very similar to the build to rent scheme that has been approved by this committee on the same site and the case officer may be able to advise further on the original reasons for refusal of that scheme and and how they were overcome and whether or not the similarities with this scheme are such that um you know a similar approach should be taken but it may be worth hearing what mr Reed has to say on that point as well chair if you wish okay we'll hear mr Reed uh chair and I was going to make exactly the points that mr carter has made real concerns as to consistency in relation to the uh the the design and massing it uh what what you've heard from the case officer is that the um in terms of design in terms of height uh this is near enough uh I won't say identical but it is in all material aspects very similar to the application that you approved as recently as uh august so consistency will need to be addressed all right thank you very much chairman if you're prepared to take any further discussion I have councillor heather williams councillor richard williams and councillor roberts want you to speak further well I didn't really want to open up it all again because please make brief councillor heather williams we wish to speak thank you chairman and yes so I wasn't present at the meeting I didn't vote on the previous one my understanding is that we we treat everything on its own merits um and that we are here to make our opinion as local members or planning committee members or whatever position we may hold at that moment in that time and and members do change on committees um the important thing is we judge it surely on its own merits and therefore if we're not happy we can't use it but we have to be clear on what you know if you want to refuse this you've got to be very clear that it stands up legally chairman my understanding is that I have been very clear for this in it's exactly the same reasons as last time you've got hg strength one the design 834 spd 2011 all right thank you uh councillor richard williams thank you chair I will try and be brief I just want to say these are matter of planning judgments I I mean I don't doubt the good faith of officers at all but we seem to be being told we've got no choice that we have to vote the way that we're being told we have to vote that's not the exercise here there is planning judgment reasons have been given and members of the planning committee might just have a different planning judgment and we can't be told that we aren't basically not permitted to make a different decision I'm sorry well nobody has said that those words have not been uttered they're merely pointing out the in their their terms what the options are so I think I've got one more I said is it councillor Roberts chairman trying to be quick and yeah I mean the inference is that we we have no choice but we clearly do have a choice there and we are always well reminded by by officers in very good faith that we must reach each one on its merits now as far as I am concerned it hasn't been improved on what was before us for a refusal it doesn't matter about that other application we forget that we look at this one and actually we could say that if we give this on top of that other one if we were going to have a bigger joining we're going to have a bigger problem now with this it's an accumulation actually of problems you know the bulk of it the height of it the effect on the community that are already there the parking problems that we know are there and a moving continually moving group of residents and I think all those with this application become ever more serious that is the whole problem here thank you yeah thank you we've got that Jim we also have modern councils council modern council local member wanting to speak again last word on this there's only a point of clarification I want from the from Mr Carter or Mr Reed the the main the point today make about consistency is understood that we this application is physical form is very similar to the one that was previously approved in August in August and that is a big criterion we are going to be hammered at appeal if we go to appeal on the basis of factors which we've already decided and acceptable so the big differences are really that we're having we're trying to impose a note don't bring the car and is that going to be enforceable and is it acceptable to have students obvious is it a social impact an acceptable reason for refusal and I would like some indication from from us planning staff whether in previous situations it has been considered acceptable to refuse applications on the basis of the type of user students and their impact on whether that's something which is normally successful it's failing because otherwise we'll spend lots of money fighting an appeal which we're bound to lose so I'd like to find some information on that okay thank you very much Mr Carter could you help us there thank you chairman thanks thank you Councillor Khan firstly apologies to Councillor Richard Williams if you felt I was trying to dictate a decision that certainly wasn't my intention simply listening to Councillor Heather Williams reasons for refusal citing those set out previous in paragraph 72 they seemed to relate to the design aspects of the building and I was simply pointing out the similarities between that and the scheme previously approved by the committee Councillor Khan is is absolutely correct there are clearly other differences between those schemes and members are perfectly entitled to take those into account in their decision making I the only word of caution I would express there is that those issues I don't believe were cited in the previous reason for refusal of this student accommodation scheme on this site so we would need to be able to explain what the differences are are now that would suggest that students occupying the building is is a problem at this stage that that wasn't last time so that would be my only sort of words of guidance in that respect I think okay thank you very much excuse me chairman is it possible sorry it's Councillor Anna Braden and I do apologize for interrupting but I'm joining you by phone my internet connection dropped out I just wanted to let you know for the record right but I dropped out while Heather Williams was speaking I think I missed Chris Carter's statement and I came back in when Councillor Roberts was speaking at 2 30 so but can I just have some clarification over whether I can still vote all right I think the only thing might be what Chris Carter said okay let's check with Mr Reed do you have a view Mr Reed thank you chair unless you want to rerun the last five minutes my recommendation should be that in line with the comments you made at the start of the meeting council Braden has missed parts such that my view is that she shouldn't but she shouldn't vote but if you wanted to rerun the last five minutes then I would withdraw that comment all right thank you very much okay so who have you actually missed them it was I it was uh Heather Williams was speaking so I missed the last part of what Heather said and uh I think I missed Chris Carter if he spoke between Councillor Williams and then Councillor I came back in when Councillor Roberts was speaking right okay so what do you want to do what's your preference um well I would very much like to hear what Councillor Heather Williams Chris Carter and Councillor Roberts said please if that's possible Chairman Councillor Heather Williams has asked to speak again no doubt she could repeat her conclusion and perhaps Chris Carter might also repeat what he said briefly okay yes we'll do that then so you're with us on the phone now are you uh I am I am chairman thank you all right um Heather Williams please Councillor Heather Williams would you just repeat what for the benefit of Councillor Chairman sorry sorry not to interrupt but I seem to have rejoined you online so I'll do that and get rid of the echo okay great okay Councillor Heather Williams shall I go or should I wait yeah no she's with us now I think is now exiting and are you there I'm here thank you Heather I'm here online now thank you very much Chairman um so I'll turn the cameras off please that's Mr Reed and Councillor Cohn so I'll I'll summarise and then Mr Carter's response left me in a in a quandary of clarification required so I'll start with what I said which was that I felt that there hadn't been significant change from the previous um application that was refused by the planning committee and I referenced page 113 and paragraph 72 and I read some from that I don't know if Councillor Bradlam needs me to to reread that no that's fine thank you I've got that thank you so that that was that and then following Mr Carter's response about um the need for consistency I just I have clarification that I think is important before I vote that as a member sitting here today is that suggesting that I am bound by the decision of other members on previous days because it's not a case of me me having voted one way one day and one way or next I wasn't on the other one so if Mr Carter could please clarify that's um um inference which I have perceived from his statement I appreciate that okay that makes sense but my understanding is I'm not bound by other members as long as I'm inconsistent myself yeah fine uh Councillor um Mr Carter please thank you chair um could you repeat your advice first and then uh deal with that one well I don't I don't believe that I spoke between Councillor Heather Williams and Councillor Roberts um I did speak afterwards um just to explain that I thought that Councillor Williams uh suggested reason for refusal which followed paragraph 72 as she's just outlined um uh it was important that uh we were um consistent in our decision making uh in relation to matters of design and then Councillor Richard Williams uh commented about other factors such as the effect of students on the local area and I was um commenting that I felt you know that was perfectly appropriate to to take into account as as something different but that it wasn't cited uh at the time of the original refusal um coming to Councillor Heather Williams uh final point I acknowledge you you weren't on the committee as you say um clearly you can you can make your own mind up on this application without wishing to prolong the pain I don't know whether Mr Reid could offer any um advice on on that point given that Councillor Williams wasn't present for the the previous decision sorry I can't offer anything further there right thank you very much so are you up to strength there then thank you so much chairman thank you so much um I in fact it seems perhaps I missed less than I thought so I did come back in as Chris Carter was giving his clarification so thank you very much indeed for going through that thank you and Mr Reid do you have any further comments no additional comments chair no additional comments thank you very much all right let's draw this to a conclusion then um the recommendation before you is for approval subject to conditions and the 106 agreement um obviously there's going to be some difference of opinions so I will have a roll call so if you're in favour of approval you are for it if you want refuse or you're against it uh and if you want to abstain you abstain so that clear so um Councillor Bradlam how do you wish to folks for what Councillor Khan back for oh thank you thank you everybody should mute all right thank you Councillor Fein please for or Councillor Hawkins for or Councillor Ripeth for or Councillor Roberts against chairman thank you Councillor Heather Williams against thank you Councillor Richard Williams against and thank you Councillor Wright against chairman thank you and my vote is four so it's one two three seven four and one seven and four against so that is approved thank you very much and we now move on to agenda item seven agenda item seven is on page 165 of our agenda and uh this is application 20 stroke 02881 stroke ful is at Wittlesford it's a factory 84 Duxford road Wittlesford the proposal is for the demolition of existing factory premises in the construction of seven dwellings and associated infrastructure including access parking landscaping and auxiliary work resubmission of application s stroke 0029 stroke 19 f l the applicant is mr peter wedd wedd joinery of uh grant a terrorist stagelford the material considerations will be outlined by the um presenting officer this is not this is a departure and the application is coming before the committee has been requested by the parish council and confirmed at the delegation meeting on the 1st of September that was considered that having regard to the planning history of the site the previous refusal at planning committee and the policy considerations associated with the site's location in the green belt that the application does meet the criteria to refer to the planning committee the officer's recommendation is approval the presenting officer is jan rodens so uh over to you jan rodens please thank you chair can i confirm that you can see the slide yes you can see that thank you brilliant so thank you chair this application is for demolition of an existing factory premises and the development of seven market dwellings uh this is the existing site location plan of the site as you can see the access to the site is from ductford road and leads behind the properties along ductford road these are the current elevations of the existing factory unit on the site the building is is a mixture of heights and scale the building is in one main block and there are two smaller separate buildings uh either side of it uh these are the elevations of the separate buildings are currently on the site this is the proposed block plan of the development as you can see the houses are set behind ductford road this is a further detailed block plan of the proposed site there is two blocks of semi-detached houses and three separate detached houses and you can see the purple dotted line on the site plan here is the factory unit that currently exists so here is a site section of the proposal so the top line is the semi-detached houses with the flank elevation of plot five whereas the bottom ones are the detached houses of plot six five six and seven so plots one to four are semi-detached houses they're circled in yellow they're all three bedroom houses plots five and seven are the same design they're both four bedroom houses and they're detached properties uh plot six is a detached house in the center are circled in yellow at the bottom so these are going to be some slides showing the pictures around the site uh in the bottom corner is a map with an arrow showing where i've taken the pictures from so this picture is taken from inside the site looking towards ductford road the dwelling you can see on the left is 84 ductford road and oh sorry sorry this is number 86 ductford road sorry i'm ahead of myself already so this is looking further into the site um facing the bend in the access track the dwelling on the left of the picture sorry is 84 ductford road so this is number 84 ductford road this is looking towards the factory from just after number 84 the building on the left is one of the smaller outbuildings in store and the building the right is the factory this is looking towards the east of the site and out of it to the right is the boundary of number 84 and the factory is on the left hand side this part of the flat roof element of the building to the east which also faces the entrance this is the same area of the building and has access towards the smaller stores this is a picture of the smaller stores that backs on to the dwellings along ductford road here it is again and you can see the buildings behind it so this is the boundary treatment to the back of the buildings along ductford road at the moment these next pictures shows around the rest of the site this one is taking towards the east of the site and towards the main entrance this is part of the larger element of the factory which is on the western side of the site this is the same building you've just seen with its boundary and the fence behind the hedge behind it sorry so this is looking out into the countryside from the west of the site so for a bit of context of the site the site is in the green belt so the north is the development framework of wittlesford and the south is the development framework of wittlesford bridge so this application is for the resubmission of a previous application which was s forward slash 0029 forward slash 19 forward slash fl the design layout form and other supporting information is the same as previously submitted the previous application was refused by planning committee for being contrary to policy s7 and s10 as it is outside the development framework also not in accordance with policy e14 due to the lack of supporting information as part of this application new marketing has been submitted which is in detailed in paragraphs 41 to 49 of the officer report it's considered that due to the lack of interest in the site during the marketing marketing of it the previous reason for refusal has been overcome and hence the recommendation for approval it's the key considerations in front of you that's all from me thank you thank you all right thanks very much just to be clear the previous refusal was largely on on the loss of employment and the fact that the marketing hadn't taken place yeah that is correct was it also the case that it's outside the village envelope and in the open countries yes so that was a reason for refusal so the previous reasons for refusal were the first one was because of the development's contrary to policy s7 and supporting policy s10 of the local plan and then the refusal reason two was the development would involve the loss of employment land and non-employment use and it doesn't include sufficient evidence to adequately demonstrate the site is inappropriate for employment use and it goes on to say this doesn't justify this which is not contrary which is contrary to policy e14 all right thank you very much for that any points of clarification required members you're happy i don't see anything councilor fein have we got anybody i have no request to speak to you oh i i i ritchard williams is asking the council ritchard williams please thank you chair obviously i should say to everybody i'm the local member so um so just just to make sure that that's yeah um there were just just a couple of points i wanted to to ask for clarification on the officers report when it comes to openness of the green belt um the officers report lays some emphasis on the smaller footprint of of the houses versus the factory but i was wondering if the officer could say something about the ridge height of the houses because the ridge height of the houses is is is large if you like because because the the row house at the back is at the same height as the chimney of the existing site so i'm wondering if the officer could say a little bit about that in terms of impact of the green belt um at the larger ridge height um and i did just have one other points of clarification in the officers report when we talk about policy e14 it wasn't entirely clear to me whether the officer was saying that policy had been met or or hadn't um because the statement referred to in paragraph two of e14 where redevelopment which proposes the the loss of employment will need to be accompanied by clear viability or other evidence as to why it is not possible to deliver an element of employment as part of the scheme i think the officers report said that that hadn't been complied with um so so but then the rest of the report seemed to suggest that e14 had been complied with so i was a bit unclear about the recommendationals there okay no problem um i would go with the green belt one first so there will be some height differences between the the factory and the new houses it's a rather crucial meeting we're trying to be part of the meeting can i call you back tomorrow thank you so much okay sorry thanks if you turn your mic off please uh counselor thank you so um sorry there will be some differences in heights that is agreed between the factory and the houses um the factory is quite varied in how in size in size uh the main reason that there hasn't been uh there's been a recommendation that's been okay in the green belt is the overall volume of it so the volume of the factory versus the volume of the houses isn't materially different to itself that's why we've recommended that there's no harm to the openness of the green belt in this instance and then uh policy e14 so there was only one second so part two does go on to say about the needs of viability report for it in the supporting information that was part of this application uh as an estate agent did market the site for 12 months they have very little very little interest in the site and the four people that did come and have a look so that they won't be able to take over the site because they needed a lot of alterations to it so bearing that in mind that's why we took on that it wouldn't be viable for unemployment use on this site that's why i put it forward in my officer report in that way sorry sorry check and i i just come back it was paragraph 48 i was referring to which concludes by saying this requirement for the policy has also not been addressed which seemed to suggest that in part paragraph 14 e14 hadn't been addressed and part a had been addressed but part one a but not part two yeah so they hadn't produced a viability report but they had done the marketing for it so part two hasn't been addressed but because of the amount of marketing that they provided to show that there was no viable interest in the site as it stood that's why i took it forward that it did meet at least part a of the policy i do understand that there will be complete loss of employment on the site but then taking everything else into into duration in balance that's why i was recommending it for approval okay thank you very much can i just say do we have any further speakers or seeking clarification no right councillor carne followed by councillor to me hawkins thank you very much councillor carne please hello is this working can you hear me yeah i'll take my head here sorry um the what i was going to just ask is the land was employment man you're now planning to transfer it to residential will the residential how properties have been built be suitable for home working because that would seem to me the obvious the way of maintaining employee some employment and also in the sort of context the position on that and do we have any policies which would help us in this um they do have quite spacious they're quite spacious internally they do all meet our space standards there could be some bedrooms potentially by the occupants that would be entirely up to them whether they want to reuse them for home working instead instead of a as i am in my third bedroom which happens to be a study for us we don't need it and there is there with me the girls of home working don't believe there'd be a policy that would help in this instance councillor bachelor sorry chairman if i might just just assist on that point um policy hq1 does talk about um ensuring that developments deliver flexibility that allows for the future changes in needs and lifestyles that's point k of policy hq1 page 104 of the local plan so that that may be something that assists councillor carne okay fine thank you very much councillor williams your camera is still on oh thank you councillor Hawkins please uh thank you very much chair um if i can refer to page 172 paragraph 35 um i think the uh the sort of mppf requires um if we look at it uh the view is that if the site would not cost substantial harm to the openness etc etc and contributes to meeting and identified affordable housing need but there is no affordable housing at all on this site so how do we justify that we're recommending this for approval sorry i'm going to get to paragraph 35 only a second so because criterion g is not actually met because there is no affordable housing on the site no there's no affordable housing on the site but there is a limited so part a of 145 the mppf says that limited infilling or the partial complete redevelopment of previously developed land where redundant or a continuing use uh then where it would not have a greater impact on the openness of the green belt is part one would not cause substantial harm that's the part there that i'm saying that uh well that i recommended that it meets that it would be the partial or complete redevelopment previously developed land so this would be the factory site that is currently no longer in use and it'd be redevelopment redeveloped for housing and then as i've recommended in my report that it wouldn't have an impact on the openness because it's not materially larger than the factory that's already there so i do understand that there is no affordable housing on the site uh so it doesn't meet that part but it does conform to part a instead chair if i if i may sorry it's christart again that's a that's an either or if you if you read the wording there it's um it's limited infilling or partial or complete redevelopment previously developed land whether redundant or in continuing use which would not have a greater impact on the openness of the green belt than the existing development that's that's jane's recommendation or the second point so it doesn't have to be both it's an either or okay thank you very much for that thank you can we just be clear jane you said in passing that the factory is no longer operational so there is no current employment on the site is that right yes at the time when i did my site visit and at the time when this application was submitted it was still in use but then by the time i'd done my site visit it was not in use anymore okay thank you very much do we have any further speakers no i think we've done that so thank you very much we move on then to the public speakers and we have a number of those um it's mr tim smith with us please mr tim smith hello yes i'm here um i'd like to decline to speak actually i'm i'm listening but not speaking today thank you okay okay thank you very much as long as you're happy with that um in that case is now exiting is cast later there please who's here on behalf of the applicant hello chairman after you here sorry to keep you and welcome to the committee thank you you know the ropes to you i i do indeed i do indeed well let me read them thank you thank you chairman um this application is for a small-scale residential development on a brownfield site and it follows a resubmission of a refusal of planning permission last year as your officer has said it was refused on the grounds that the site is outside of the development framework and the insufficient information had been submitted to demonstrate that the site is inappropriate for employment use members at that time requested a marketing report the site has since been marketed for over 12 months and no offers were received the agents marketing the site have advised that the building is specialist with low and restricted head height it's been especially adapted to meet the needs of a joinery workshop and is considered difficult to convert for another business user your officers have accepted the findings of this report and now support the loss of employment from this site as you've heard the site is located in the green bell and mppf policy allows for the redevelopment of previously developed land in the green bell where it would not have a greater impact on its openness this is the case here the footprint the floor space and the volume of the proposed development would be smaller than the existing premises and your officers have have agreed this and raised no objection on that basis in terms of the design the layout and the scale of new development your officer's advice is clear that this is also acceptable concerns have been raised by the parish council and neighbours about the impacts on residential amenity the proposed dwellings are orientated and designed to safeguard neighbours amenity and to comply with national space standards the proposal has been assessed in detail in the officer report and officers have advised that there would be no significant harm to residential amenity officers have also advised that there would be no significant adverse impact on drainage or trees there are also no objections from county highways and it's noteworthy that the existing access serves an existing business use albeit the building is currently empty and accommodates a range of vehicles including articulated lorries in summary there was no market interest in this employment site and whilst it is located outside of the development framework and this proposal is a departure from the local plan it is on the edge of a sustainable village the residential proposal would make use of a previously developed site it would enhance the openness and the character of the green belt by reducing the amount in form of built development and it would also benefit neighbours by removing an unrestricted employment use that has in the past caused noise and disturbance there's no substantial harm to other interests and the contribution of this proposal to the district's housing supply is considered to be a benefit overall it's considered that these matters are important and outweigh any departure from the development plan and I would therefore ask members to accept your officer's recommendation today and to support this application thank you chairman hi thank you very much in point of clarification required members i have nobody asking for that in chat at the moment i don't know whether councillor bradden wanted to add anything to what she said in chat i think that's just a matter of explanation yes i've got that thank you very much yep just say that it's a shame because i have visited the site and would have liked to vote but i shan't on this occasion thank you okay just to explain that councillor bradden is i t contacts have dropped out for 10 minutes so she's not going to vote councillor carne would like to speak councillor carne please i just wanted to ask whether the whether the applicant had considered a producing a special design work home work restaurant to work homework unit rather than straightforward residential now i mean this is this is not a sort of dedicated live work unit scheme but as your officer said earlier earlier you know these are a mixture of three and four bedroom homes that are proposed and there is flexibility within each of those homes for rooms to be used in any which way they're required so that could well mean home offices and home working excellent thank you very much there i don't have any further speakers so thank you thank you chairman and i'll move on then to the parish council there's councillor winter bottom with us please councillor winter bottom there please no we have heard him coming in and out on his phone that is he on our list is councillor winter bottom sorry chair if i may he's in on his phone but but it is on mute right now if he hits star six and then the hash button that that should unmute him allow him to to speak into the meeting because he does he does appear in the list i hope he's heard that so we'll give him a minute or two to try and make contact alright chairman you have councillor richard williams wanting to speak as local member i don't know if he wants to take him first yeah well we can do councillor williams so did you want to speak at this stage uh well i i just wanted to flag up a few points that you know was the local member obviously you know approaching this um as a member of the planning committee fresh but just to flag up the points i thought were important for committee members to to to bear in mind i think the the green belt and the openness issue um uh the loss of employment i think is is is is still an important issue for us to consider the affordable housing question councillor hawking's raised this has not been brought forward as as an affordable housing site but there is an acute need for affordable housing in the village um policies now exiting policies um s seven um an s 10 i know from the officers um report um are still not met because this is outside of the um green belt um so the these are the points that that that i think are particularly important on this i've already raised the issue about openness um i think affordable housing is is an important issue to discuss as well so i i look forward to hearing um members um discussion of the application okay thank you very much let's just check if uh council winter bottoms managed to make contact yet uh council winter bottom are you with us in the winter bottom i think you might have just left the meeting you might be trying to come back in all right we give him a second or two i mean i think if he rejoins i'm perfectly happy to come back to him during this chairman can i just um make a contribution on behalf of council winter bottom it's not obvious how to unmute yourself when you're taking part by phone so it might be helpful if erin could repeat the instruction that he gave earlier uh erin can you do that please uh yeah chair i'd be very happy to but as as uh council williams stated he he's left the meeting so uh i i mean if he's what if you if he's watching uh and he needs to know how to unmute himself on the phone it is star six and the hash button but uh is now joining uh is that council winter bottom joining us missing winter bottom can winter bottom is your stage if you're with us can you hear me yes good right um well thank you chair for your patience uh i've only got one further hang on a bit it's just a bit of process i have to go through first since you're representing the parish council i have to ask that you have permission to speak on their behalf i have yes i'll be okay um okay you've got your three minutes and whenever you're ready right uh i've only got one further point to add to the wittlesford parish council's objections to this application and uh that is that the emerging wittlesford uh near club plan seeks to increase and preserve employment opportunities in the village and the uh south cams local plan of 2018 uh also has policies which mirror that these objectives with the aim of reducing the need for people to travel long distances to their place of work the granting of planning commission for this application will remove uh a very long established site of employment which goes back at least 70 years and i think near 100 years and will be the disadvantage of the residents of wittlesford i think that's all i've got to say on this okay thank you very much hang on a minute and we'll see if members want to any clarification on that i can't see any comments coming through so thank you council hawkins would like to speak would you okay councillor hawkins please uh thank you chair um i think it's a it's a briefly to um the issue of losing a long-standing employment side but if as has already been presented to us the site has been marketed for employment for over 12 months and there has been no interest in it at all um therefore i just wanted to know um what mr winter bought from his view is or the parish council's view is in you know trying to keep on a site that is no interest for employment and also i don't know whether or not their um emerging neighborhood plan has that's area as being what one they want to keep for employment but i just wondered as to the reasoning to carry on keeping it if no one wants it um i don't know the question of uh wanting a site is often uh judged by how much it's going to cost and i would estimate that the costs uh that were wanted for the site as an employment were equal to those for residential use at about one and a half million pounds uh if that's any uh help for you in terms of information may come up this chair yes please do thank you so what you're saying is you feel that the price that the site was marketed at was too high for the function for which it was being marketed uh the price was too high right okay thank you for that clarification all right thank you very much councillor bradden would like to ask a question all right councillor bradden please thank you chairman um my question is not quite been asked by councillor hawkins this time but um i wanted to ask um if it was uh being envisaged as being included in your neighborhood plan as a um as a site for employment mr winterbottom in the parish view what sort of employment did you think might usefully be located there had you a vision of what you thought might happen there uh not no particular uh type of employment but something we could also fit into a residential uh locality uh uh no uh nuisance to neighbors will be the last thing that we uh that we wanted of any employer okay thank you very much thank you thank you all right i don't have any further speaker so uh councillor winterbottom thank you very much for your contribution well thank you thank you uh and we move on then to uh debate who would like to open debate anyone wish to speak chairman can i seek clarification um it's councillor and a bradnam if am i permitted to take part in the debate if i am not able to vote i believe so yes okay um i'll just check that um um mr carter are you aware of the rules there thank you chair i i'm not certain of the rules there i'm afraid i don't see that there would be any harm but possibly mr reed may be able to advise mr reed chair i would have no objection to councillor brandman uh being involved in the debate okay thank you very much thank you do we should speak then councillor brandman thank you chairman thank you very much for that clarification um one of the things we've talked about is that in villages um i'm sorry if somebody's already mentioned this in the discussion or part of it that i missed but one of the things people need is um offices where they can work from an office but uh not in a great big office block and i just wondered um given the preference that the parish council had for an employment use that would not disturb the neighbours i wondered whether a small as it were what do you call it um touchdown base for working where people don't have enough room to work from home then that counts i'm going to stop you there okay right you can't we we're not creating a new application we can only deal with what's in front of us as always so all i was thinking is that it would be a shame to lose the employment land given that it's been allocated to the neighbours plan that's the point then isn't it so yeah sorry i was thinking that that's the balance that you need to think about yeah okay uh who else would like to speak councillor rippith and then councillor heather williams right thank you councillor rippith please and i think one of the main points about this um going back to page 172 with the either or where obviously the officer thought on point one um about the not having a greater impact on the openness of the green belt than the existing development i'm feeling a little bit more towards point two where it seems an absolute shame if you're going to lose that employment site that there isn't any um affordable housing involved in the development i know they don't have to do that but that makes me feel um slightly uncomfortable right thank you and councillor heather williams please thank you chairman um we i can see how as it's on the edge of the parish how it could be suitable for some form of development if the um if it's been satisfied that there can't be any employment news however the fact that there's no affordable housing i just find unacceptable if this was an exception site then completely different conversation but as it is you know it's seven houses in green belt with no affordable and that to me is is no sorry departure and so it shouldn't be allowed okay thank you very much any further speakers no i don't have any further councillor richard williams did you want to come back at all um well yeah there are no other speakers if i could just just say some things um there is an acute need for affordable housing within the village i mean for the information members there was an acre report in uh 2017 which identified a need for affordable housing of one and two bed unit so that that certainly is a key concern locally and obviously there is no affordable housing here i mean to my mind the policies s7 and s10 are still not met um and there's no no no debate about that and they were the um the first reason why this was rejected last time um in terms of policy 14 i mean we've heard what the parish councillor said i mean i'd also note that a lot of the marketing took place during the the the covid outbreak and i'm not sure it's quite true from the officer's report that there was no interest there was there was some interest that there was no offer made i don't think well certainly it wasn't sold um but but it's not that there was no interest and this was being used for employment up until um late july um so um so on on that basis i i i i do have real concerns about this um it's an unfortunate lost opportunity for affordable housing i also know which we haven't mentioned yet actually there is there is overlooking which the um which the officer's report does note um there's overlooking of the properties um number 102 and 100 um number 100 of duxford road um so so there is a residential amenity um issue here as well but the affordable housing thing and the lack of it is important given that there isn't a need for that okay thank you very much i think i can't okay councillor calm please i feel like the system between by this i absolutely agree we need affordable housing uh uh this is general everywhere i can freely uh need to keep some form of employment use uh i um and there doesn't seem to be any attempt to try and get some employment interest uh adaptability when they design they just submit to the previous presidential development however the the other side of it is i think clearly the rather awkward shape buildings employment buildings beforehand what i believe that what any residential use is likely to be less inclusive or more open and it does appear to meet one of um one of our planning policies very in terms of for the green belt in other words the development of or previously developed land with um so i uh and it's a smaller number of houses that we cannot insist upon affordable housing element so however much in my desire so i feel that i'm happy about the thing the lost opportunities that we have to deal with the application that comes and it appears to me to meet meet our policies um i'm between i still haven't quite decided okay thank you very much i just wanted you're muted sorry but the further point of clarification i would like to know if are there any conditions we could do in post if they did give permission to ensure that adequate position was made for or the adapted adaptation made for homeworking i'm not sure we have a policy for that to do here but uh we come back to that in a minute i've still got more speakers um is it councillor roberts thank you chairman uh yeah i mean it's becoming more interesting as we go along and as we all put in our 10 penny worth but i'm afraid i don't think i can support it either because i think that um it doesn't comply with uh green belt policy really and i'm really concerned again it's outside the village development line we really do need to hold true to that policy um it's it's one that over the years has always been pressed and pushed and i think it's really important that we we keep to it if this had been an affordable housing yet we would have all absolutely loved it and said wonderful nice little group here for this this small and important village but it doesn't and so chairman but you will have to have reasons we'll have to give you reasons that because obviously some of us are going to be wanting or refused or thank you chairman thank you okay do we have further right hang on i'm just getting some advice from Mr Reed that um because this has gone so long we have to actually officially have a vote about continuing with the meeting so uh members um we've been going now for five hours i believe um do you wish to continue so this is my affirmation is anyone against agreed agreed all right so no one's against all right we labor on them okay our next speaker chairman i think i'm probably the next speaker okay um yes this is in the green belt it is uh although it is a vacant site although it's a vacant site and so far as we can tell there is no interest in buying it as councillor richard williams pointed out it's rather difficult to be sure about that in the current circumstances given the price being sought um now obviously this would be could be considered as an exception site which would of course include market housing that is not the application which is before us but i think we need to be very careful to ensure that uh all options are considered before sites in the green belt are allowed to be converted um and i'm not sure that those tests are yet met on on this one right thank you so are you uh suggesting refusal if so we'd like some guidance on the grounds all right chairman if we were to refuse it it would be on the grounds that this is located outside of the development framework and in the green belt all right thank you good uh and with no affordable element chairman yeah indeed um well i mean that's no obligation affordable that's uh the next speaker i think is councillor daunton is it it is yes thank you chairman i think um i what i would have said it would be more or less exactly what councillor pete fein has said um i would just i would also reiterate what councillor richard williams has said about the marketing of the site both the time at which it took place the marketing took place and the level at which the site was marketed um taking up councillor winter bottoms remark earlier on okay thank you very much um mr carter can i just consult with you yes chair thank you um so there were two green belt out of the side of the village envelope yeah so there were two reasons for refusal given last time by the planning committee uh and to my reading of them um it sounds like members consider that both those reasons still stand um i don't believe they're set out in the officer report but it may be that the officer can just uh either share them on the screen or read them out for us uh yeah i can share them on the screen over two seconds can i confirm that you can see the screen can you see that one yes we can jane yes okay thank you chair would you like us to read them out are you happy that they can draw on the screen just reading it so it's one that that may still apply is it yes number one is for being outside of the development framework s7 and s10 and the number two would be inappropriate for the loss of employment um contrary to policy e14 right but the market has been dealt with you but we but also there was the point about the lack of affordable housing if this had been come forward normally outside the village framework it should have been an exception site and that would have been 100 100 percent affordable housing yeah but that's not what's in front of us we can't deal with that all right okay so um are we Mr Carter that uh so item one would essentially remain the reason should uh people wish to refuse well well i i think i think chair from what i've heard that item two would stand as well because yes please not satisfied that the marketing information uh is sufficient to demonstrate that there is no uh interest or requirement for the site for employment purposes so i think you would have both reasons still remaining okay all right yeah let's deal let's deal with this then so let me just get that right okay so we're going for a vote then so the officer recommendations approval so if you but those who wished to refuse it we essentially um do not think the current the refusal of the previous one has been met and we would put up the same reasons so if we care about that um i'll do a roll call um so if you want to approve it you are for it if you want to refuse it you're against if you want to abstain you're abstain so councillor brennan is not voting as staying having missed some of the discussion chairman okay that'd be noted in the minutes uh councillor card please again again against councillor daunton against against that's the same against against Hawkins please against councillor rippeth against councillor robert against councillor windows h against uh councillor richard williams against right okay and my vote is against so that is unanimous 10 votes against it is refused thank you very much everyone for that one and we move on to the next application which is agenda item and is now exiting and it is on page 193 of your agenda so this is application s3215 stroke 19 stroke dc uh long stanton the retreat fuse lane long stanton the proposal is discharge of condition four foul water drainage and five surface water drainage of planning permission uh s2937 stroke 16 stroke fl the applicant is mr gary cadu of uh landbrook homes limited key material considerations will be dealt with by the presenting officer um this is not a departure the officer recommendation is to approve both conditions the application is brought to committee because this application has been referred to the committee on the basis of a parish council objection third party objection and the public interest in this application the presenting officer is louis tomlinson so over to you mr tomlinson thank you thank you chair i'll just share my screen thank you chair so the site is the retreat fuse lane on stanton um the application hang on one moment i'm sorry mr tomlinson council robert's can i ask a question chairman um we received um over the last few days correspondence in written paper form about six pages on uh this application regarding this application now the correspondence and stuff is within the agenda i i don't think that this is within the agenda i wonder whether the uh parish council and the objectors have been made fully aware of the content i'm also very concerned about the content thank god i mean i i'm aware that the legal officer has seen all this so get his view on it thank you thank you uh mr reid do you have a view on that uh chair the um correspondence has been seen by the director of planning and he felt that uh it was such that the matter could proceed right okay so chairman can i just quickly about given that in my opinion a lot of the content in it is um very personal um seeming to be um intent on um making comments about the uh people who were against it on a very personal yeah i think well i think i need to stop you there council robert's because we're being told that it's not relevant to this and that they were sent to individuals these are not necessarily public documents so i think we're in that case if they're not public documents we should ignore them completely absolutely thank you chairman absolutely council williams heather williams did that answer your question chairman yes we're um having to ignore them that suits me fine having never received any i was just worried there was something i hadn't received that worry you're not missing you're not one of the chosen then heather no so as you see not everyone has actually had it it's not a part of the presentation here uh so um as far as this process is concerned it doesn't exist all right mr tomlinson if we can sorry to interrupt you i'll back to you now please thank you chair is my microphone muted no we can hear you great lovely okay so the application site is within the development framework boundary of long stanton village lies outside of the conservation area and sits at the rear of the retreat so the retreat is this property here there is planning permission for the demolition of this property and the replacement to dwellings to the west of the application site just here are two recently constructed dwellings and the application site the in reference to this doc is just here so the application site is currently a residential garden which was associated with the retreat and as i said benefits um from a planning consent for two dwellings here but also a single dwelling back here different consents the application site as you can see is um access of the high streets via fused lane non and unadopted access drive and public right of way immediately to the north of the garden lies an existing watercourse ditch which full which outfalls into long stanton brook so ditch just runs along this boundary here it's worth to it's worth to note that the site falls within flood zone one and therefore has a low probability of flooding from rivers and sea the environmental agency service flood water map also shows this site is an area of low to very low service water flood risk and long stanton brook is shown nearby to be a medium to high risk of service water flooding so that's just an aerial view of the site as you can see there's the existing bungalow and the recently constructed dwellings to the west and the brook just runs alongside here so there's a bit of background to this application so previously the plan permission for the erection of the dwelling which is the doc that relates the application that was allowed on appeal back on the 27th of september 2018 the current application seeks discharge of condition four which requires submission of full details of the full of the foul water drainage strategy for written approval by the lpa the application also seeks discharge of condition five which requires submission of full details of the proposed service water drainage both from the building itself and from the proposed driveway area for with for written approval by the lpa both conditions were imposed by the planning inspector on the previous appeal decision and the reason for these conditions was to prevent flooding this application was submitted to and validated by the council on 16th september 2019 delegated decision was issued on the 28th of october 2019 confirming discharge conditions four and five subject to systems in accordance with the approved details this decision was subject to judicial review from an interested third party who wished to submit comments on the proposed foul and service water drainage scheme prior to the local planning authority's termination of the application a consent order was issued on the 12th of may 2020 quashing the council's delegated decision to discharge conditions four and five dated 28 of october 2019 the application has now been passed back to local planning authority for reconsideration and to allow for third party comments to be submitted i can confirm that these third party comments have since been received and are summarized within the officer reports officers can also confirm that this application has been subject to re-consultation including further re-consultation for and receipt of additional submissions from the applicant this application has been referred to planning committee on the basis of a parish council objection third party objections and the wider public interest in this application these are just the approved plans for dwelling in question as you can see these elevations in front of you now and an approved floor plan as well so this is a approved site plan so i just want to point out a couple of points of interest so you've got the area to the front which is the permeable block plavin and the garden to the rear and the attenuation tank we located here which would discharge into a brick but we'll go into that further detail later on so the foul water drainage proposal is to discharge foul drainage into an existing foul sewer infused lane and the service water drainage proposal is to discharge service water into an attenuation tank located in the rear garden of the dwelling which is approximately here a hydro brake flow control chamber is shown at outfall to the proposed storage attenuation tank which discharges to the existing water core stitch to the north which is just here the driveway serving the dwelling it's proposed as a gravel driveway operating as infiltration feature and that is just this element right here so the great cambridge shared planning service has appointed expert advice and drainage matters to allow the local planning authority to fully consider submission of details provided by the applicant also to consider any third party comments and to assess the proposed scheme for foul and service water drainage at the site having full regard to adopted national and local planning policy as well as published and acknowledged approaches and best practice full copy of the report prepared by the appointed consultant san tex is provided at appendix a which also includes details of the qualifications and expertise of the consultant providing advice to the local planning authority that consultants also with us today in the meeting if there's any technical questions that members are required required to be answered so local um the local parish council on stanton objects to the discharge of condition five third party reps have also been received objects into the discharge of both condition four and condition five numerous concerns being raised as summarized in the respect of technical details relating to proposed foul water and service water drainage accordance of the details with this service water drainage hierarchy accordance of the proposals with adopted local plan policy cc slash seven cc slash eight and cc slash nine as well as national policy and guidance lack of information that the proposals will increase water runoff into long stanton brook increase in flood risk also that the proposed service water runoff will be greater than the existing runoff rate for the site as undeveloped and the proposed outfall into the existing water courses outside of the red line application boundary both officers and the appointed drainage consultant are satisfied that the proposed submission details in accordance with adopted national and local policy and guidance which is outlined in detail in the officer report it is considered that's been satisfactory demonstrated that the scheme provides a viable and fully justified foul and service water drainage strategy that will not increase flood risk elsewhere in the officer's judgment the extension if any of the development beyond the red line boundary would be de minimus and in any event into an area within the same ownership as the site even if the development could be said to extend beyond the red line boundary it would not be appropriate or proportionate nor in the public interest to require public to require planning application to extend the red line in those circumstances so in conclusion officers recommend that planning committee approves the application to discharge conditions four and five attached to planning permission s slash 2937 slash one six slash FL as outlined in the officer report it's got a couple more slides to just show you so this is the full wording of the conditions which is outlined in the officer reports the just the drainage details proposal summary which we've already gone over but this is the very kind of basic of it so foul water drainage discharges into the existing foul sewer and fuse lane service water drainage is discharge of service water to attenuation tank located in the rear garden of the dwelling a hydro break flow control chamber shown at the outfall to the proposed storage attenuation tank which discharges to the existing water core stitch to the north and the driveway serving the sites proposes a gravel driveway operating as an infiltration feature so this is sorry it's a bit blurry but as you can see this is where the attenuation tank would be just in the rear garden and discharging into the brick to the north and this is a section through where you can see a pipe here that would discharge into the brick thank you chair that's everything thank you very much um just before we move on can I ask officers I understand that the public video has frozen is somebody dealing with that Aaron for example sorry Jack could you repeat that there's a note here that says uh the video for public watching has frozen oh yes that's been that's been resolved thank you chair I apologize okay good thank you very much right sorry about that uh members any points of clarification required here just bear in mind that all we're dealing with here is the discharge of two conditions foul and surface water drainage um Councillor Thane would you like to have some speakers Councillor Roberts would like to speak thank you Councillor Roberts please thank you very much chairman um I would refer you to the officer I mean obviously we've taken uh separate advice ourselves but the uh the input from the long stand and parish council is really um you know really detailed and there's an awful lot of in it um are we absolutely convinced that uh every concern that the parish council have put down in writing has been um put aside as as as okay and no problem all right thank you Mr Thomianson could we respond to that please thank you chair so um we went out to an independent drainage company to review all the information they've come back and advised us that everything is um okay with the application and the complies with local and national policy is there anything in particular Councillor Roberts that you'd like to question no but the long stand and parish council on page 196 they talked about there that they support all the comments that have been made by neighbours now the comments by neighbours are many um and and and often um and go on to you know pages and pages now I'm no drainage expert um but I do need to feel that uh this is not the problems are not going to occur here because um I think that we are setting ourselves up to um have future claims made against us uh so Mr Thomianson I think my colleague I'm sure you've probably don't have a comment on that Mr Carter will probably help us here thank you chair yes as Lewis explained the purpose of appointing the independent consultant was to review both the information submitted by the applicant but also the comments of both the parish council and third party representatives and that's that's what the report does in order to advise the council on the acceptability of the information to discharge the conditions so officers are satisfied that those points have been considered in that report uh hence the recommendation in front of you thank you chair excellent thank you very much thank you uh councilor Braden and wanted to speak council Braden please thank you thank you chairman unfortunately I'm going to have to leave shortly um I don't want to curtail discussion but I'm I'm satisfied by the comment made at number 14 by the independent consultant and so I wondered unless you want to have further discussion whether we could move to the vote no we have public speakers oh sorry I do apologize yes of course we're only on the initial presentation so when when are you going to go councillor I have to leave at about five to four well I'm afraid you won't be here for the vote if I'll I'll write at the point at which I leave but I don't think I'm going to be able to vote on this chairman um chairman it's councillor Daughton here might I come in please I think you do know because I warned you in advance that I have to leave at four o'clock I have a four thirty appointment um so I'll be leaving at the same time more or less okay got it been noted for the benefit of the minutes uh we still got speakers I think councillor Thane uh yes I think we do we have councillor Richard Williams thank you councillor Richard Williams please thank you chair it's a question for the officer I don't know if if long stands and parrot councillor is going to speak so it might be best we should uh direct this to them so please tell me if so but I was just wondering if there are any problems with water courses in the area um I mean obviously you know maintenance of water courses can be an issue in a lot of villages and parishes so I was just wondering if that was if there were documented problems with that in in this area all right thank you mr. Thompson thank you chair it's not something I have in front of me so it might be better to aim this question towards London stands and parish council all right they will be speaking though they're on my list sorry okay thank you is that all the speakers okay we go to the public speaking then um and can I ask mr. Folton to come forward please uh yes thank you chair good afternoon welcome yeah you know yes when you're ready then um as the committee knows um the council's decision to approve this application was quashed by the High Court on May 13th of this year the reason for that was because the council promised to undertake a public consultation it then failed to do so and issued a decision anyway since the decision was quashed on the 13th of May no public consultation has been undertaken since then sending me a letter and sending an email notification to the parish council does not constitute a lawful public consultation I am incredulous as to why officers have brought this to the committee today knowing that no public consultation has been undertaken and knowing that that any decision taken by the committee today will be undoubtedly be quashed in the High Court um the stand deck report frankly isn't worth the paper it's written on I will not miss waste the committee's time refuting it today because the decision can be quashed on other grounds um that's all I have to say thank you very much okay thank you thank you mr. Folton uh anyone wish to ask mr. Folton any questions nope okay then thank you very much mr. Folton can I then call the applicant myself councilor Williams Heather the Williams would now like to speak all right uh councilor Heather Williams please said for such enthusiasm chairman it was just I think the reason my request as in late was because I didn't catch right at the start and I had a bit of breakup of internet connection and to avoid me having to not be able to vote could mr. Folton repeat the start of his um I got everything and then I heard word consultation then it blipped out a bit and then I heard High Court quashing that's about what I got sorry chairman sorry mr. Folton would you mind yes uh the High Court quashed the council's previous refusal on May 13th of this year because the council had promised to undertake a public consultation and failed to do so since May 13th of this year no public consultation has been undertaken or in regards to this application um sending a letter to the fuse link consortium and sending an email notification to the parish council does not constitute a public consultation when the council has published a notice on its website that says that there is no public consultation underway and the comments are not being accepted so I'm incredulous as to why this application is before the committee today um because the committee has no lawful basis on which it can proceed to approve the application at the present time thank you thank you very much for repeating my apologies all right thank you how's the thing do we have any other we have none showing at the moment chair no all right we move on then chairman just to say a time sorry to interrupt but just to save time as that statement has just been made by mr. Folton um I think we ought to get um the legal view of mr. Reed and mr. Carter on this one because I will do I will do I'm intending to do so but I'm giving the other public speakers the opportunity first to make their own points we will come back thank you we'll come back thank you very much is mr. Cadu there please yes indeed I am all right if you'd like to put on your camera please can you hear me yeah well thank you very much indeed um you know the form you've got three minutes I won't even take up three seconds I've just thank you to the address by the planning officer and I think it covers all the points that I wish to raise today so I've got no further comment to make on this application thank you all right okay thank you very much it's sorry to keep you so long today okay um the parish council have um a representative is uh Libby White with us please I am good welcome to the planning committee thank you chairman keep you so long yeah you've got three minutes to address us all right be very long don't worry okay thank you um so long standing parish council have asked me to come today to speak to you on their behalf I'm the parish clerk if you don't know who I am I think I've spoken to you all before the reasons for objecting to the application originally made in September 2019 was to do with the discharge of water surface water drainage into the watercourse and which they felt was in contravention of planning condition five comments from long standing parish council stem from concerns raised by residents and councillors alike and they're based on the limited planning knowledge that they have it's understood that parish councils are statutory consultees and believe this is to help you as a planning authority by being the local knowledge the eyes and the ears on the ground so to speak with this in mind long standing parish council expects that having been consulted on this application no less than seven times they would have been asked to review the expert evidence submitted in the sun tech report especially due to the sensitive nature of this application I would like to stress that at no point has this been made to available to long standing parish council and to understand what the experts are suggesting or to allow local residents the opportunity to comment councillors have asked me to stress their stress their frustration at the number of times this application has come forward and it has wasted a considerable amount of precious parish council time and assumed it would have done the same for the planning team too we would like to ask that the planning authority refuse the application or at least defer allowing local residents the chance to have a say following site of the sun tech report thank you all right thank you very much there may well be some questions for you thank you councillor Richard Williams I think you had a one for the pc yes I'll just ask thank you jail ask the same question to the parish council representative really it's just whether there are problems with watercourse maintenance or there have been problems with watercourse maintenance in long stands and that you know about I was speaking to the pat matty's yesterday actually so we have ongoing issues with them not being maintained and we have flooding a few years ago when there's been heavy rainfall okay thank you so in your sorry Jeff I can come back so in your view with that is that something that affects this this application part of the concerns residents they're very concerned about what what will happen if there's extra water put in thank you excellent thank you very much I don't have any further questions so thank you for your contribution there thank you can I go to Mr Carter I would like to comment on Mr Forton's comments yes perhaps if I say my piece and then Mr Reed may have comments to add so my understanding of the quashing of the original decision was that the council had instigated a public consultation but then made a decision prior to the conclusion of that public consultation so there was a legit legitimate expectation raised that the public would be able to comment on that condition and because the decision was made in advance of the conclusion of that consultation that was the the reason for the decision being quashed as members will know the council does not as standard practice consult on the discharge of planning conditions by way of public consultation and so that there has been no formal public consultation in this case however as Mr Fulton pointed out the fuselain consortium and the parish council have been notified turning to the stand tech report the purpose of the stand tech report is to advise the local planning authority as to the the adequacy of the information provided in order to discharge the conditions it's not a document on which a public consultation was required it's a document that's used to inform the decision making of the council and hence it's been used by us to make the recommendation that you have with you today I don't know whether Mr Reed would like to add anything further to that you may wish to speak to him chair right but from your point of view there's no reason for us not to proceed no I don't believe there is thank you Mr Reed do you have anything to add there chair if I may just a point of clarification in relation to the quashing of the original decision you've heard from Mr Carter that discharge of conditions is not the subject of public consultation but you then heard Mr Carter say that actually we made a decision prior to the end of that consultation so the point of clarification is that Mr Fulton indicated to the officer that he would wish to comment the officer wrote back and advised Mr Fulton of when the period for reviewing the information would run to and then before the date given in that letter stroke email had been reached the conditions were discharged without letting Mr Fulton know that effectively the date had been brought forward Mr Fulton argued that the letter stroke email from the council gave rise to an expectation that he would have the full period referred to in the letter stroke email in which to comment and in those circumstances the council took on board that he had an expectation that no decision would be made prior to the date given in the letter so it's just a few little nuances there in relation to the opportunity for people to comment as opposed to being subject to a formal consultation I hope that's helpful. All right but as far as the committee is concerned are you agreeing with Mr Carter that there's no reason for us not to proceed? I fully support that the planning officers are satisfied that the matter should proceed on the basis of the information that they're able to put forward to you today. Okay thank you very much. All right members it's a debate now then I think we've got some speakers have we Councillor Fane? Just trying to find it very coming up at the moment yes I think we have councillor Roberts and councillor yeah. I think it's Heather Williams first please. Right okay so we have Heather Williams and the graduates left us then councillor Roberts. Okay all right thank you councillor Heather Williams please. Thank you chairman. So I understand what the officers have said but given the representation that's been made and the reference to the parish council I'm going to ask this from a slightly different angle so take on board that what the officer said was that there was nothing to stop us to turn this today okay but given how sensitive this site is and given the views the local views and the parish council's views is there anything that says that we can't just differ and allow people to have a consultation in this situation given the sensitivities of the site because it just feels like unnecessary pain to be putting people through so while it might not be a requirement is there anything that prohibits us from doing that thank you chairman. I think the answer is that the committee can do what it decides it wants to do but you know this has been going on a very long while and it's really unfair that the matter shouldn't be brought to a conclusion so I'd be very reluctant to do other than make a decision today on this outcome. Chairman that may be your view but if I'm in my right to suggest a deferment then I'm going to do so because I just think it could actually create more long-term pain than the short term of allowing people to I don't think so anyway if you're making it as a proposal then I haven't got no choice but to take that. Is it a proposal? Yes chairman and for the council to actually do a consultation on this discharge of condition. All right can I have a seconder for that please? I will second it chairman but I'd like to speak as well still. Yeah okay so we have a proposal before us from Councillor Williams for a defer on in order to allow further consultation. Councillor Roberts please would like to speak to that. Yeah and I'd like to explain why I think that's very important that we do so. Yes it has obviously become a very contentious issue and I'm not saying who is right, which side is right, which side is wrong, which professionals are right, which experience, villages are right. I just don't think I know at this moment in time and however I think it would have been circumspect to actually make sure given you know just how raw this situation has become that we went back to the parish council in particular and explained and sent them the the details from the professional report that we had taken. The fact that we haven't done so and the fact that they are supporting so many concerns and they're saying that you know they've had Matthew's done that very very recently well we know that Pat is our drainage expert so you don't pull Pat Matthews out to a village unless you've got real problems and I think so in these circumstances it will hold it back a little longer but I think we have to get this right because I do myself think that there is you know the law can be interpreted by different people in different ways and it seems to me that Fuse Lane have taken some advice, our legal people have a different view of it but I don't want this one I mean it seems to me quite it would be quite out of you know comprehension with its size and importance if this was to go yet again to the High Court for a judicial review. It doesn't mean whichever way it went it's not good it's not good for the council and it's not good for parish councils and residents so I would just ask my colleagues just let's just calm this one down let's send the information out in full to the parish council and bring this back next month thank you chairman. Right thank you does anybody else want to speak to the proposal for deferral? Yes please chairman. Council right. Council right please. Thank you chairman my name is down to speak anyway but I'd like to speak to the proposal I don't feel having listened to our officers and Daniel Fulton that we're heading in the right direction I think we should defer it I think you know having offered Daniel Fulton consultation just to you know delay it going to the High Court again you know for a month other than delaying it for a long decision from the High Court let's go to consultation you know with the parish council and fuselage consortium hear what they said bring it back next month and let's be open let's have some open stuff let them see the stands stand tech consultation report you know we shouldn't have anything to hide it's an independent report it's not just there for officers it's there for us to make the decision on long stands and you know that that brook in the center of long stands and there's been a long-standing problem it floods every few years it's piped where it shouldn't be piped the pipes blocked up on the award drain and flooding occurs so it is a very sensitive subject that we need to get right so that's my opinion chairman all right thank you very much I think council Fane wants to speak to this yes chairman I am usually against deferrals I think enough time has been wasted as we heard from the parish council and others and indeed the parish council and mr falton himself have been further consulted that is not the problem however it's quite clear or seems clear that the parish council have not seen the report that was commissioned this is clearly a sensitive issue so unusually in this case I would support a deferral and then a proper consultation of not just the parish council and mr falton but a proper wider consultation because of the sensitive nature of this issue all right thank you very much for that any other comments no if not there if mr carter wishes to comment just so I'm clear chair um members are moving a deferral in order that a public consultation may take place uh on the stand tech report that's the reason isn't it it is yeah that is yeah okay all right members uh I'll take a roll call just to note that we've lost two members who have already gone and that's councillor councillor braddon and councillor dawnton so um what we're voting on is for deferrals so if you're in favour of deferral you're for it if you're not you're against and if you want to abstain you abstain so councillor calm that's your view please or deferral thank you councillor thayne for deferral or councillor hawkins councillor hawkins please or councillor ripeth for councillor roberts for deferral chairman thank you uh councillor heather williams for councillor richard williams for councillor wright for yeah and I will vote for so that's uh two four six eight nine in favour of deferral no votes against item eight is deferred thank you very much we then move on to item nine on the agenda just before we do that would members like 10 minutes break is that a yes yes please yes please yes okay chair we are now live again thank you thank you welcome back to uh south cams district council planning committee we are now on agenda item nine which is on page 213 of our agendas this is application s 0150 stroke 20 stroke f l at 11 home close sway z the proposal is a construction of a two-story and single side extension uh the applicants is mr kevin shirwood the officer will take us through key material considerations uh the application brought to committee because sways the parish council request the application is determined by committee the presenting officer is laryne casey and the officer recommendation is for approval uh laryne casey could you give us your presentation please thank you and you've got your camera on thank you okay right i'm sharing my screen can you confirm please if you can see this okay um so as described this is a proposal for a part two-story and part single story side extension to number 11 home close in sway z so the site is part of a small scheme of 20 affordable dwellings that was approved as an exception site on land cited outside the development framework back in 2013 this is a two-story semi-detached house that sits in the middle of the site the proposal is for a part two-story part single story side extension um that would be cited on the east side building between number 11 and the adjacent property at number 10 so this shows the proposed floor plans um the proposed extension would be set back from the front elevation of the house as the single-story element would be set a meter or so back and extend the living accommodation at ground floor level the first floor element would be set even further back roughly in line with the central point of the house and would increase the number of bedrooms in property from two to three so this shows the existing and proposed elevations existing at the top proposed at the bottom the proposed extension would be set approximately a meter lower than the rich line of the existing house and you can see from the side elevations how it's set well back from the front of the property so two-story dropping down to a single story with that still being set behind the main front elevation of the house so the key considerations are the principle of development loss of small units for accommodation the character and appearance of the area including landscaping impact access to the rear garden and residential amenity so we haven't had any neighbouring third party representations at all but the parish council has raised a number of concerns with the proposal so firstly in terms of the loss of a small unit of accommodation the parish point out that the house forms part of the development that was approved as an exception site specifically to provide small starter homes for local residents and that this proposal by adding a third bedroom would compromise that the second issue they've raised is that this proposal in adding a two-story extension to the side of the property would result in the loss of a rural vista to the open fields that lie beyond the site to the rear straight north and they point out that this would be contrary to this Swayze village design guide which was adopted earlier this year the parish has also raised concern about the loss of the previously grasped front garden area to create parking and consider that the loss of this greenery would affect the character of the area and their final concern relates to the loss of access to the rear garden area I should as an update point out that since the officer report was written councillor Ellington has written in to record her concerns on the grounds the same grounds that the parish councillors raised that the development was built in as an exception site for people with the Swayze connection she is concerned that this extension would set a precedent for the loss of small units of accommodation and change the character of the development that was carefully planned to include views across the fence and space for children to play so turning to the main issues I've identified here firstly in terms of the principle of development site is outside the development framework extensions to existing houses are supported in principle by the plan for the CH-13 subject to a number of criteria I think the main criteria that this picks out is the impact of development on the character of the area and we'll look at this in further detail a bit later on in looking at the scheme against context of the village design guide in terms of the loss of small units of accommodation issue that the parish has raised it is the case that this development was approved as an exception site specifically on the basis of the local needs in Swayze now that approved scheme was for 14 rented houses and six intermediate houses in those intermediate houses included potential arrangements for the occupiers to to own those properties at later date and in this instance for this property the the owners have exercised their right by and the applicants agent has provided details of the title deeds to show it's now in their ownership so the increase in the number of bedrooms to the property isn't something that's controlled with section 106 and there's also no local plan policies that seek to prevent small units of accommodation being extended so also officers be used that this proposal wouldn't raise any policy conflict by increasing from two bedrooms to three bedrooms the next issue to look at relates to character issues and typically to look at it in the context of the village design guide the parish councillors referred to two paragraphs in the village design guide there's home close falls within a section that relates to mixed linear development and two paragraphs say that the aim in these areas is to maintain existing landscape features and that new development should take use from the street section hedges and verges off street parking views through to the landscape and the harmonious variety of houses I think I'll show you the overall extract from the village design guide this is a plan that looks at the landscape edge and key views just to show you the context that the site sits in so the the village design guide talks as a whole about the character of the village being a linear village but with close visual linkages to the countryside beyond and with the number of existing farms on the edge of the village with views through that provide that visual connection now on this call to the moment I'll just I'll just put the laser pointer on so that I can show you this so the dots here are the farms that lie on the edge of Swayze and then near to these farms you have some arrows there's 15 important viewpoints identified all together within the village design guide where the design guide identifies that these key views through to the countryside need to be maintained now home close the site that we're looking at sits here so it's not affected by any of the farm sites or key views identified in the design guide there are two sort of more minor views which are identified as valued landscape gap or view and I'll go on to the next slide just to show you this in in more context okay so this next slide shows the identified open spaces within the village design guide home close sits here and there's a green area here identified as in central open space and then we have a close up of home close here now this shows all this green area here was approved as sort of landscaping for the development this shows one of the identified views on the previous plan which is across that open space through to the fields beyond then the other view shown on that plan was more this this open space here so that's the context of the village design guide the parish council's raised concern that by extending it to story level to the existing house that it would compromise the aims of the village design guide officers views is that it wouldn't it wouldn't encroach into any of the key views identified in the design guide nor the key view sort of across to the fields beyond next to this site I think looking at the photos it's just to demonstrate this further the other point to mention is that there is also a gap between the site and number 10 to the to the east so the proposed extension would be as I showed you in the plans of the development it would be set back quite way behind the front elevation of the house this gap where number 10 is would still be maintained so there would still be a gap in that building line and views through beyond I'll just run through the other slides again this shows the context of the site and number 10 next to it and you've also got a slight stagger in the building line which would help to break out that impact as well and again looking toward the site from from the east shows the stagger in that that building line so as mentioned officers views is that the the proposed extension wouldn't compromise the the aims of the village design guide and that the the extension is very much subservient to the sign of the existing house there are concerns that have been raised that the front garden has been paved over now this was done before the application was submitted and being a permeable surface is permitted development so these works don't actually specifically require planning permission I think because I showed you on a previous slide as well the key green areas identified in the village design guide are the main sort of structural landscaping and setting to the development rather than the the small grass frontages to the to the front of the houses another issue that's been raised by the parish council relates to the potential obstruction of access to the rear garden area I'll scroll back here to the block plan so this proposal would reduce the gap at the side of the house to 0.4 meters that isn't enough space to to drag bins from the rear garden so to compensate this the application shows a small bin store located to the front of the extension and officers have also recommended a condition requiring details as to where bikes would be part and the final issue to mention is one of residential amenity we haven't had any third party objections but this proposal involves two story extension coming towards number 10 to the east number 10 has no windows in in this elevation so officers satisfied that the development wouldn't harm their amenities through lost light uh overlooking or overshadowing thank you chair just to conclude the recommendation is one of um one of approval subject to conditions thank you okay thank you very much any we're getting echo for some reason or anybody wish to we have councillor heather williams wanting to speak all right okay councillor williams please I hate to contrary the vice chair but he definitely had a question in first but I can go it's all right let's get on the question um so it's just about the there seems to be a bit of concern from the parish council that this was an exception site and I'm just wondering if um if any of you are able to just explain how we can balance that and whether the fact that it was an exception site is no longer a um a material planning consideration or not obviously the the purpose of those houses being granted permission was that they were small and this would make them not not in relation to their original purpose potentially thank you yeah um through you chair I think to to respond to this um I don't see that there's any um policy basis for being able to sustain an objection to the number of bedrooms being increased within this proposal um although it was part of the original remit for the um home clothes being approved and that it was specifically designed to meet the uh the needs of the village at that time um there is no requirement either within that planning position the 106 or within planning policy um to protect those units as effectively as they were built in perpetuity um the other point I would make is I think that um policies have evolved since to look at uh sort of lifetime homes and to consider homes being suitable for um living in in the longer term the original occupants have exercised their right to buy and I think are proposing uh a modest extension to it that would enable them to to continue living in the house thank you chairman I must apologize I had missed out both councillor Deborah Roberts and councillor Judith Ripith who I thought were in relation to the previous item I'm wrong so they're both down to speak if they may okay fine uh so councillor Robert simply is you with us councillor Roberts sorry chairman it's all that noise that's something talking behind my question is being asked by councillor Heather Williams thank you chairman okay lovely thank you very much councillor Ripith then please I think my question has been asked by councillor Williams as well so looking at the material considerations are you saying that actually lost the small units of accommodation is no longer a material consideration because it's been superseded by other other newer policies and the fact that they've exercised their right to buy if you can confirm either way yeah so through you chair um whilst it is a consideration at the time that um exception sites are are approved um there is no ongoing control in terms of planning policy that specifically protects small units for accommodation all right thank you very much for that uh and surprisingly um not for doesn't protect them from right to buy either which is something of an issue but nothing much we're going to do about that uh do we have more speakers councillor Ripith wanted to speak chair she just has I just have since I'm down I might as well speak chair me no actually councillor Payne's got his name down before you come to Councillor Hawkins in a minute yes uh going back to the question of viewpoints which was the uh one of the key concerns the parish council we saw a photograph taken pretty well direct on from the front just now which showed not only a um a white what looked as though it could have been either a container or a lorry which of course would be temporary but behind that another permanent building uh it did seem to me that the view to the extent it was important or had been one of those protected was obscured anyway um is that correct three new chair if I may um it is compromised to some extent by the um photo that I showed you which has a domestic outbuilding to the to the rear of number 10 um but I was looking more at the the sort of higher level and first floor views above that building thank you we then come to councillor Toomey Hawkins chairman all right thank you councillor Hawkins please thank you chair um if I can refer to the village design guide uh 4.1 and um I think it's 4.4 4.5 the idea of that is I mean I was one of I had the pleasure of sitting through um listening to all the I think it was 708 uh village design guides when um went to the design enabling panel and I know that uh Swavesy was very very keen on keeping uh the gaps in between uh you know the houses and the buildings um so that you know they had views out into the countryside now obviously in this case uh 4.1 states to maintain the rural gaps and important views um again also through controlling tree plants and alterations to buildings and 4.4 4.5 went you know sort of go on to emphasize that so in if we're looking at this how do we justify the fact that the extension is to the side and will block some of that deal I know it's you know what's before us is on a side extension surely a real extension would have been better but then that's what was before us so I take that point but my my feeling is that if we begin to encourage on the views in this way it's only a matter of time before everybody wants a side extension and then it's all blocked so my question how do we justify the side extension in this but I don't see how we do I might go wrong for you chair if I may can I um share my screen again and show the plan up of the uh Village Design Guide Extract yeah please can you all see the plan yep got it okay so the paragraph that councillor Hawkins has referred to is the paragraph 4.1 of the design guide um says that the intention is to maintain the rural gaps and important views identified in figure 10 now the um plan in front of you is figure 10 um and then it goes on to say including through controlling tree planting and alterations to buildings and boundary structures that this paragraph relates to those important landscape gaps and views that are specifically identified on on this plan I may put the laser pointer back on here just so you can see it more clearly um as mentioned there's 15 identified important viewpoints um so starting from the north um coming down they're quite hard to see on on here but there's another one here near to the site you've got uh one in here um and then a number of others at the points where you have um particularly have sort of farms that are directly next to the to the village framework now there the um important gaps that the design guided identifies that need protecting my view is that if we did have applications for extent site extensions to buildings um that included tree planting and that included boundary alterations that would fill in those gaps and conceal those views through to the countryside um that that would raise conflict with the village design guide in this instance um officers views so that the the proposal doesn't raise conflict it isn't one of those views identified as being important within the village design guide and the um the valued landscape gaps and views that the village design guide does identify um in Swayze uh which we can see in further detail um in this picture here um covers the views to the to the open fields across this parcel of land so I think would you know would be a strong reason in addition to the landscape value for um resisting future development of this space here um but our view is that the site extension to this dwelling here doesn't raise conflict with the with the aims um and specific guidance within the village design guide thank you chair can I come back to this chair yeah briefly please can you go back to that that drawing thank you because further down in the design guide it does it does talk about the brakes in fact you can see that it says brakes in the building line there's a reason for that um you know it's a linear development popular to the main road but those views are still important to those who um you know put the uh design guide together so what's going to be happening is you have this linear development you have the build you know the brakes in the building line which are deliberate but what this particular one is going to do is going to start blocking that up that is my point and you will find it in 4.5 as well so that's my concern yeah okay okay councillor then you know you bring that into your consideration I don't think the officer is actually can tell you anything much more on that that's it that's my contribution thank you thank you very much okay any more questions councillor feign no non-listed chair excellent so we move on then to the public speakers we have two public speakers here on this one is Sophie Mason with us please hello yes I am hi all right welcome sorry to keep you so long no problem thank you I take my hat off to you doing this for a job I've listened all day it's very hard work it is and we're not finished yet Sophie okay so the other system you get three minutes to make your points uh and then I'll ask you to wind up if you're still on and going so when you're ready you've got your three minutes thank you yeah thank you for the opportunity to speak today regarding my home extension which will will provide an additional bedroom uh for our son he's now at the age where he can no longer share a bedroom we have a two-bed house currently uh and three boys we're a family of five we we've been working very closely with the planning department on this project to ensure that the design was kept was was within keeping with the existing property whilst not being obstructive or having a negative impact on the neighbouring properties we have ensured this through design by not by not having any overlooking windows any privacy or loss of light issues this design meets the relevant planning policies as highlighted within the officer's report and as such planning permission should be granted I'd like to thank the planning officer for her assistance during this planning stage and and thank you all you know for your comments and commitment excellent thank you very much any points of clarification members that you want mrs mason i don't see anybody okay well thank you very much indeed for your contribution there mrs mason and we'll move on to the parish council for them is council right with us please council right council will write can't hear him left is still on the list he is with us chair on the phone um it is that that he is on mute um and wouldn't have been here earlier on so uh council right if you can hear me um if you try to on your keypad for your phone click uh star six and then the hash symbol that should allow you to unmute and speak uh i also sent the instructions to your email all right thank you we give council a right a couple of minutes and see if you managed to make contact how's that hello yeah is that council right hello can you hear me yes i can do it oh okay is that the chairman yes the chairman speaking yeah good afternoon good afternoon sorry to keep you so long that's okay and members of the council i'm i'm normally sitting in there when only these things happen but unfortunately i've had some result to have telephoned today because of the uh teams i can't get on there with my laptop but never mind no okay fair enough now as a member of the parish council i i just need to ask you that you have the permission of your parish council to speak on their behalf today i do yes i think your email was sent yeah all right okay you got three minutes to make your point to us so whenever you're ready these go okay thank you um 10 years ago the home closed site was a paddock on the edge of slavacy and then in 2013 an outline planning application was granted uh on behalf of a housing association to build 20 dwellings for social housing which would be maintained uh directly for people that lived in the village and uh either or either that or work in here so they could be close to home and work um when permission was granted the housing association dropped out of the project and self-careers district council housing took over the building thereof this development was an exception site and still is outside the village development boundary to provide smaller properties for local people to live closer to their families in the village and of their place to work uh the parish council was extremely disappointed that the right to buy was not withheld from these properties so as to keep them as low-cost housing in perpetuity as residents purchase and extend these properties the original purpose of their origin will be lost as market values and larger dwellings would never have been approved on this site just 200 yards from this site across the road all homes are currently marketing uh 100 homes the current price for a two-bedroom house over there is 300,000 pounds and the current price for a three-bedroom home is 360,000 pounds this is not affordable housing but reflects the price of housing in our village the village design guide was adopted in january this year and clearly states the need to maintain rural views and gaps between the dwellings where these exist and to protect the landscaping of front gardens what this does not mean is really the positioning of refuse bins and two or three vehicles in front of the dwellings where this or any similar extension on this site to go ahead it would effectively be in total contradiction of the design guide which is an integral section of the emerging neighborhood plan the parish council as I say the parish council was very disappointed that the right to buy was not withheld we feel we feel that if a precedent is created then before we know where we are there'll be developments everywhere on this site and that is not what it was intended to be and we would like to think that the original idea of maintaining this as affordable housing unit or people directly connected to the village would maintain as it is without further development and that's all I've got to say on it um if you've got any questions for me please let me know thank you thank you very much now are there any methods methods that members would like to raise with this I haven't seen anybody so far Councillor Thane do we have anyone no one listed at the moment chair okay thank you very much uh thank you councillor right uh thank you for your time and your contribution thank you okay thank you thank members um open for debate who would like to kick off please right is there no one wishes to speak to this we have councillor Heather Williams wants to speak to councillor Tumi Hawkins and now councillor Richard Williams too fine okay thank you very much so councillor Heather Williams please thank you chairman um I think it's been it's been really helpful hearing from all the speakers and I and I can understand the situation the applicant finds themselves and and why they want to do what what they do um obviously from from our position we have to look at the material planning considerations and I just feel that the extension with it going sideways as opposed to going to the rear um for me there is a lot of uniformity in that road and I think that does create a disruption to the street scene as a whole um so I I will listen to to others of course but I am minded that that the extension in its current form is not really suitable for the for the road itself and I would be on the if I was looking to refuse to be on the grounds of street scene and policy HQ one of which that falls in um but you know we'll be listening to others because I can see it's a very much unbalanced thank you chairman thank you can we go then to councillor Tumi Hawkins I think councillor Hawkins thank you thank you chair um I think I wouldn't say about the point what you heard what I said earlier on um I believe that the uh the proposed extension where it is is out of keeping out of character and um will affect the way that development looks and and the views that um it has through the gaps in the building so it's uh it's appearance and character I think for me I'll completely understand where the applicants are coming from but I think uh it's an extension in the wrong place thank you thank you very much next is councillor Richard Williams all right councillor Richard Williams please thank you chair um I'll try and be brief um I I find this a really difficult application um I hear what the parish council says and I understand the points councillor Hawkins had just made about the street scene I can also very much see it from the applicant side and I do note something the parish council said about the affordability of housing it's a catch 22 really because yes you want to preserve affordable housing within the village but equally people who bought those houses and maybe can't afford to move to a bigger house but need a bigger house if we cut off their ability to to extend their house too we're just creating a slightly different problem um so so I I'm very on the fence about this one I I can I can really see it both ways I've got great sympathy with the applicant I can see the parish council's point of view I'd be interested to hear what other members think you then have councillor Martin Kancha that's the car please thank you I don't really think that the view between these houses which Lauren are very typical assembly attached houses uh in the countryside uh I'm sorry coming out from the village is a really major impact and the design and materials seem to be matching quite well it's not going it's we've got five three children it's five person house and two programs it's acceptable and I cannot see that the people who live there are likely to be able to move to one of these three hundred or three hundred or three hundred and sixty thousand pound houses in the village I think actually uh helping them to stay in the house is um is a meeting part of the need our social need and I all you know I think my general feeling in this particular situation so that's our working favour if we wish them to remain central houses we should have found a system by which we did but we'd like to buy there but we have to accept what happens brother all right thank you and councillor ricketh please part of my points have already been covered but I just want to emphasise that when we went on a housing trip um organised by Judy Fletcher these this is one of the places we saw and I was struck by how you have that view through and the larger gardens and if we allow this although I can completely understand the applicant's reasons as as to why it is actually overdevelopment of the site you can't get round the sides of the house and it will set a precedent because why wouldn't everybody else want to do the same and block in that view block in the gap okay thank you very much councillor say any further speakers councillor nickers right thank you councillor right please thank you chairman thank you chairman um my feeling on this is that the planning officer in case he has been absolutely forensic in her going through each item very very clearly and you know it's tempting to look at the site as a whole but she's dealt with each objection very very clearly and um the I do know the site well it does have that combs teeth views through it but this doesn't this extension in its own right doesn't completely block up the view between the houses it blocks one side of it so it is fairly minor and anyway it's not one of the main views that are covered in the design guide so um tempted as I am to go with my heart and defend something which I don't think is defendable I think you know the planning officer is right on this and um that uh although the principles were there in the original design that has been eroded with time unfortunately and um you know each application has to be taken on its merits and on this application on its merits I think we should grant it thank you chairman thank you very much I think councillor saying you want to speak yes quick word I think councillor right has just said it I accept what the planning officer said that this does not compromise the village design guide the village design guide does not say there should be no further extensions to houses within the village um I think I take on board entirely what Richard Williams was saying about the need for families who come into affordable houses to be able to grow to accommodate in this case they're three boys although the personal circumstances are not what we're looking at here and also what Martin Khan said and so I am satisfied that the planning officer has given us the right advice in her very clear presentation and that we should therefore approve this application right thank you very much indeed um I agree entirely we have every sympathy with the parish council but there seems to me that to be no legal basis to do other than allow this this is not a major view and I don't think that argument stands up so without further speakers I will take this now to a vote so the proposal before you is for approval if you want to approve it you're for it if you want to refuse it you're against and if you want to say you're abstaining I will do a roll call councillor calm please approve thank you councillor feign for approval well thank you councillor Hawkins against thanks thank you councillor repeth against thank you councillor Roberts for thank you councillor heather williams against thanks councillor richard williams for thank you councillor right for thank you and our vote for so the outcome is two or six in favour and three against so this application is approved thank you very much we move on then to our next application which is our gender item 10 it's on page 221 of uh gender will write swabacy parish council so thank you very much so we have now exiting agenda item 20 stroke zero two two one seven stroke fbl this is a cotton them eight little field posed range could everyone make sure that they are on mute please there's a lot of background noise going on thank you right the proposal is the change of use of land to form part of residential cartilage and the erection of a double garage the applicant is mr paul levitt key material considerations will be outlined by the presenting officer this is a departure the application is brought to the committee because of departure policy s stroke seven the recommendation is for approval and the presenting officer is rebecca claden rebecca claden would you give us your presentation please thank you chair i'll just share my screen good i can see that wonderful okay so the site is eight milfield in cottonham the proposal is for the change of use to land southwest of eight milfield to see three residential use to form part of the residential cartilage of the property as well as the erection of a detached double double garage the land sits to the southeast of eight milfield the key issues to consider in the determination of this application are the principle of the development and the impact of the proposal to the visual amenity of the area and encroachment into the countryside um the development sits outside of the development framework um which is this black dash line here um but it does not sit within the conservation area or the statutory green belt the land is 0.05 hectares in size whilst its lawful use is for agricultural purposes the land is not currently part of a wider agricultural land holding and is therefore not in active use um an application for eight milfields if the site for a two-story side extension single-story rear extension and loft conversion was permitted earlier this year the site itself sits on its own and is surrounded by fields on all sides except the northwest however there is a stretch of large semi-detached properties which face eight milfield and these properties do benefit from a considerably larger residential cartilage than the site this is the view of the site toward long view which faces away from cottonham the site is situated to the right of the image so just here and this is the view facing cottonham and this is the site to your left here and this is a proposed block plan the site outlined in red here um as you can see there's associated landscaping including planting and hard standing as part of the proposal there's also the addition of three parking spaces um as well as the development of a new detached double garage and these are the proposed these are the elevations of the proposed garage these are the elevations of the long elevations of the proposed development so the the incorporated cartilage there this is eight milfield and this is the new garage and here as well so eight milfield and the garage the parish council have objected to the proposal on the basis that the proposal would be contrary contrary to neighbourhood plan policy co h2 1 and local plan policy s 7 um due to the location of the site which is outside the development framework whilst the proposal does sit outside the framework and would be contrary to the aforementioned policies it is considered that the extent of conflict with the local plan would be limited due to the size of the site and the presence of the dwellings opposite um and that therefore would be no significant visual or encroachment harm um uh arising from the proposal it's also considered that the proposal would preserve the character and appearance of the area in accordance with policy hq 1 of the south cambridge here local plan um and officers are therefore recommending this application for approval subject to conditions thank you chair all right thank you uh any points of clarification members chairman can we ask could we ask to have a look at the um the drawings again please yeah it's a specific point you want yeah because there's a big gap between the house and the um intended garage yeah okay can we then distract that then please Rebecca yeah of course um so this is the front elevation of the proposed of the of the long elevations um and this is the side and rear is there any particular one you'd like to see councillor actually showed from the front which show the green area between it it's not this one previous one that's it thank you great thank you okay so how far away from the house is is this yeah i mean why why is it being placed so far away i mean it's got the potential it's it's almost like a dare i say it a separate dwelling is this in reference to the to the new to the proposed garage um yeah yeah um i mean i'm not sure why it's it's been placed so far away um to be honest so how far away is it actually them um i don't actually know off the top of my head if you give me a couple minutes i can i can find out what's that 20 yards or something like that you wouldn't expect a garage to be so far away i mean you're going to get absolutely drowned drowned through to the skin if it's raining try to get to the house okay all right okay thank you uh councillor Thane have we got speakers councillor right we'd like to speak councillor right please councillor right and councillor Roberts has made half my point that it is such a long way away and also you're creating an infill site between the the garage and the house looking at the gap it does seem very surprising that we should even be considering this right thank you well on what basis wouldn't we be considering it councillor right could i explain himself yeah this is open countryside it's outside the village framework and you're busy creating for an applicant an infill site with a gap between two buildings right well yeah we as always we can only judge what's before us isn't it so we can't surmise what might or might not uh happen else in later times but anyway i'm sure we've all noted that uh councillor Thane was did you want to speak no chair i don't need to speak myself and i don't see any others who are okay great so we now have councillor Kahn wants to speak is it councillor Kahn the last-minute speaker again i'm going to make a little comment that when i was uh uh in my teens i lived in a chartist uh former chartist settlement in the midlands which was a house very similar to this the former former horticultural house and the garage was all at a little bit further distance away from the house so i don't in that sort of location it's in a rural area i don't find it particularly unusual so whether it's convenience or not a matter okay thank you for that so no actual question so i go to public speakers in that case so thank you very much Rebecca um we have a written statement um from the applicants which you've all had a copy of that's from Mr Leavitt um i'm sure you've all read that um can't actually be with us today the parish council i believe is being represented is councillor Morris still with us please councillor Morris yes i can you hear me thank you okay thank you um yeah we're all done still with us okay sorry for the long time today um i'll help you i'll help you a little bit by keeping the front end short because it'd be quite repetitive compared to what i said earlier um but one thing that is important is to remind us that a neighborhood plan is the voice of the local people or local community in terms of where they think new homes shops and offices are to be built and what they should look like um having said that um we also have local knowledge of the site millfield in particular some years ago was the subject of a demolition order where an owner and it's not directly relevant to this site but it is in millfield constructed a substantial building that had to be demolished later partly because of the traffic problems it was causing millfield is a privately maintained road with a very narrow access entrance with limited visibility space that often cause accidents and road traffic situations so millfield is unable to support safe segregated pedestrian access and in our view any development is unwise and the suggested conditions while perhaps necessary if it was approved don't really address the two key concerns in our view policy coh 2.1 was there for a reason the development framework which we extended as part of the neighborhood plan and it does say that development proposals outside the development framework will only be supported by the design to provide appropriate facilities for rural enterprise agriculture forestry or leisure or where they otherwise accord with national or local planning policies so as councillor right said this application should not even be here there's no attempt been made to demonstrate how a detached garage which I think in the design and access statements is acknowledged not to be a garage at all it's a storage facility located some considerable distance from the residential premises and again the distance is such that it's practically unusable in rainfall and such like and unlike one of the councillors suggested the councillor claim I think it was garages in Cottenham generally speaking are not that far away from the property that they're serving it may have been the case in some council properties from the 70s but they caused their own problems of course trust as a council house is detached from the properties so in summary because there's been no attempt made to show how the detached garage located some distance away from premises complies with any of the allowed purposes under the neighbour of plan policy so H21 how it delivers any planning benefit it's not a house it's a storage facility it's not an affordable homes it's not an exception site none of the kind and how that could outweigh pedestrian safety concerns in the road and it also doesn't comply with local plan policy S7 so permission should be refused thank you thank you very much any questions for councillor Morris I think councillor Fein you got the question yes perhaps I should just stress that I haven't made any comments about the distance between houses and garages anywhere I just wonder to what extent this is likely to create traffic problems when it looks from some of the pictures we've seen as though the owners of this house already have cars so presumably it wouldn't affect the number of cars actually going up millfield I think it will the layout plan shows two additional cars if you like in front of the storage facility and a car alongside the house and inevitably there will be more more traffic it's a small amount but given that the access is only four meters and there is a conflict over the final 20 meters going out of the site into a very restricted area of rook streets and that area where the visibility displays are very short in this case it will increase the probability of accidents all right thank you very much chairman I don't think we have any further members committee seeking to comment okay we can let councillor Morris go then thank you very much for your time thank you okay members anyone wishing to make a statement on this one no right so you want to go straight to a vote then we have councillor Roberts wants to contribute to the debate chairman and I'd quite like to do so myself after that okay councillor Roberts please thank you vice chairman thank you chairman and my feelings are I'm always so appreciative of Kotlin parish council and they do an awful lot of very informed checking before they come to see us and they have their facts like we used to say ducks in a row and I think that the fact is that this is not compliant with any of the allowances that would be made for this particular site it should clearly in my mind remain as garden land I am very concerned about the the distance that has been put between it this building because it's not a garage it really does not appear to be a garage I think Kotlin parish council have called it a storage facility and the present house we appear to be going down the route of you know making a separate plot here and giving it a residential use so I think on all the planning criteria and grounds that were put by the Kotlin parish council representative we should be refusing it thank you chairman all right thank you councillor thane yes me again chair um I think we may wonder why this garage is not being placed next to the house we may even have our suspicions as to its real purpose as to whether it is intended in the long term to create a separate unit I think there's nothing unusual in saying of all garages that they're effectively storage areas but they are nonetheless ancillary to the existing use of the building if in due course a garage placed on this site the owners then owners were to seek conversion to a house they would of course need planning consent and that would be considered in the light of the neighborhood plan but this is a proposal an application for a garage on the site just next door to the house and I don't think it's for us to judge how far a garage should be from the house and whether somebody is going to need a number brother to get from one to the other chairman I'm sorry but that's pretty great isn't it come on no no interruption thank you if you want to speak let's put your name down again got another speaker is councillor right please thank chairman I'm going to differ from councillor fame in that I think this is going to cause problems it is you know a design feature that it is too far from the house and it should be adjacent I can see no reason why it shouldn't be adjacent if it's going to be acceptable but I'm absolutely with cotton and parish council here and it should be refused I believe with the neighborhood plan policy co h2 and local plan policy s7 being taken into account thank you chairman thank you so it's coming up okay did the officer Toby Williams wish you to speak to us I believe yeah thank you chair just to say in the the report actually the distance is referenced by Rebecca between the garage and the house has about 17.8 meters at some distance and also in Rebecca's PowerPoint presentation there are views looking up millfield and you can clearly see that there are side windows in the existing property which is presumably why they have set the garage away from that property what I would say in terms of kind of members approach to this is that the scale of the garage is domestic scale we're not prejudicing the council's ability to kind of determine kind of any other kind of applications that might come forward on that land and you'll see that the officer recommendation seeks to remove party of the permitted development rights for the erection of any other um outbuildings on that land thanks chair thank you very much um I think we have councillor kahn wants to speak right councillor kahn please well I understand cotton parish council's concern about it being a development in the countryside this seems to me relatively small scale I'm sorry I mentioned earlier on in the questions about the distance but I've commented that it doesn't seem to me exceptionally distant for that sort of rural location um the question is whether we're willing to extend the cartilage I should point out at the moment the land is in agricultural use and you could build agricultural things without permitted development rights which will might be well much more ugly by doing this we take the land with which I don't think it's totally intrusive building into uh into control because we'll be all permitted development rights as part of a residential cartilage I think that I don't really see enough reason to refuse it and I should probably support it all right thank you gem councillor roberts would like to come back at us yep okay thank you councillor roberts please ready thanks chairman the thing chairman that I'm reading is you know what we got here is land outside the village envelope where you wouldn't allow development and what it clearly states here is that they are asking us and what we would be giving is a change of use to residential on that piece of land so the talk about we can stop it at some later stage if it morphs into something different we're halfway down the line if we go along with this and and I'm sorry chairman it seems to me thinking back to what uh the parish council and chairmen stated it doesn't fit in with any criteria we're asking to change a piece of garden land outside the village envelope into residential use and once we go down that road and chairman there are sites like this in every village in south cairn bridge there we are setting a dangerous precedent here thank you thank you very much um mr carter wishes to have a word thank you chair before you quite do that then I mean obviously a number of members are likely to be looking for a refusal my understanding of what they're looking for is that this is an inappropriate development in the open country side is against the design guide cllh stroke two and it's outside the village envelope yeah may I return to that in just one moment chair um so just just for the clarification for the committee uh following developer sorry council robert's comments my apologies um when we say change of use to residential use we mean domestic residential use to change to a separate residential use i.e. another dwelling would require a new planning commission in its own right um so that's just for clarification in terms of potential reasons for refusal yes I agree council chairman what I've heard is that by virtue of the location outside of covenham development framework the proposal is inappropriate development in the countryside contrary to policy s7 of the local plan and policies coh2-1 of the neighborhood plan that would be my reading of what's what I've heard from the committee thank you okay thank you very much thank you let's just get that done okay so I don't have any more speakers so I'm going to go to a vote so the recommendation before us is for approval so you are for it if you want it approved you're against it if you want it refused we've got the grounds outlined for refusal if that's what you want and if you want to abstain you're abstain um somebody else has turned up could you turn your camera off please thank you okay so we're going for a vote and I do a roll call so councillor calm or or councillor fein for or okay councillor Hawkins against against councillor rippeth for or thank you councillor roberts against okay thank you councillor heather williams against councillor richard williams against councillor right again thank you and I'm four that's two four four and two four five against so that is refused thank you very much everyone on that one and we moved to our last planning application which is agenda item 12 no it's not it's agenda item 11 so agenda item 11 on your agenda is it's page 227 um it's uh application 20 stroke zero three three zero eight stroke cl2 pd and it's a 51 brookfield way cambalm so the proposal is for a lawful certificate for a proposed single sorry side extension to both sides of a detached house the applicant is miss air the key material consideration is whether pros pros or constitutes permitted development um it's not a departure it's coming to us because the applicant is a member of staff at south cams district council the officer a recommendation is approval the presenting officer is john mecca tier um so over to mr mecca tier will you give us your presentation please thank you chair give me a moment I will share my screen could you confirm you can see that for me yes we got that okay thank you chair um good afternoon councillors my item is an application for a lawful development certificate for two single story side extensions at 51 brookfield way normally this would not require uh committee deliberation but circumstances are different here as the applicant is a member of staff at south cambershire district council I'll move right on to the site location plan and we can see here 51 brookfield way on the road there no conditions have been applied to the property which would remove permitted development rights and this is not a conservation area I'll move on to the proposed plans we have existing elevations above proposed elevations below and we can see the proposed side extensions here and here those dimensions are quite small but there will be 2.6 meters in width and 2.6 meters in height at the eaves if I go over to the floor plans again we can see the extensions on the side of the building there and they are 7.7 meters in depth which matches the depth of the existing house I've summarized the pertinent details for permitted development neither of the extensions would exceed a height of four meters you've seen that neither extension would be greater than half the width of the original house both extensions would be single story as you recall from the elevations and both extensions would be constructed with similar materials to match the existing house so the proposal would appear to comply with schedule 2 part 1 class A of the town and country planning general permitted development order 2015 therefore I recommend that a certificate of lawful development be granted in this instance thank you chair thank you very much well members it's before you simply because it is a member of staff it's been pointed out to you that it meets all the requirements can I go straight to a vote on this one please agreed okay can I take it by affirmation is anyone against no one against so that is approved thank you very much thank you thank you john quick thank god okay we move on we're now on agenda item 12 on page 231 and it's the enforcement report can you hear me right anything to report I've got no updates in respect of the reports submitted there are things going on but there's nothing I can report on at the moment okay fine anything members would like to raise I know a councillor Heather Williams would probably like to thank you for the appendix 3 which is the enforcement activities in her ward if I may speak for myself chairman is that okay well all right thank you chair much appreciated so yes thank you very much for sharing the appendix and I think that's very much helped some local residents as well to understand exactly what's been going on on the site there has been one thing subsequent to that which is in the report which was the tarpauling incident but I contacted Gordon and he was out the same day and it's definitely has made a made a difference some of the measures that have been taken of recent so my thanks to all the enforcement team for your support doing that thank you you're very welcome thank you chairman thank them for myself do we have any further speakers councillor right wanted to speak all right thank you councillor right please chairman through you could I request an update on cotton and smithy fans and our progress through the courts there at the next meeting yeah thank you very much is that all right yes I know is there actually going to be something to our update on yeah well there will be we've had um a recently aerial photographs of the site taken which we'll be uh comparing with those which were taken in november and see what changes have taken place okay thank you very much so we're going to have that at the next meeting that would be great so I think we have I hope you haven't sat there all day of you well I've sat here but I've been doing other things you've been in the background chairman I hate to stop yours in mid-flow but I see that councillor rippith would like to speak oh right okay councillor rippith yeah I apologize sorry chairman um just a thanks it's not yet made it onto the report but um thanks to the enforcement team for sorting out the issue on fen road in milton we should dare say we'll come on to the next agenda okay good thank you very much so you're only got thanks today so well we're done okay I won't need too big a drink tonight thank you chairman just as you say the Dalasonia has thanks we have a question from councillor williams please oh no he's on the peels I think isn't it oh yeah I was I was preempting that we might move quite quickly on to the next one yeah but we're about to go there now so thank you very much we've done the agenda item 12 we're now on 13 appeals against planning decisions um councillor williams you want to raise a point thank you chairman it was just the new appeals that are in and the dates could officers just let us know in any of these applications of our five-year housing land supply being tested please or the other grounds thank you very much um mr carter can you enlighten us uh instead you can just bear with me a moment my computer seems to think it's had enough so just one moment it's probably not just your computer Chris I think we're all feeling like that at the moment uh so looking at those appeals received given the scale of development we're talking about um I mean I don't know for sure I can check for you councillor but it doesn't appear to be the case uh that that would be a factor in any of those appeals uh let me just very slowly scroll down to the final page chairman as it's been a long day I'm happy for yourself I'm happy if um if they want to get back to me outside the meeting um because it might be that it's not one of those and it's something different happy to take it offline if as I say I'm not aware of any uh ongoing appeals that do raise the issue of five-year housing supply but I will happily find out and update the committee to that effect excellent thank you very much for that so any other points anybody wants on appeals I see that the current one's all dismissed or withdrawn they're all done there okay so if there's no further questions on that we come to the end of the meeting yep the dog agrees with that I hear in the back dog says go let's go so thank you for everyone who's attended thank you members of the committee thank you officers another long day what are we seven and three-quarter hours uh so well down everybody I'll see you again at our next meeting which I think is on the 11th of November okay thank you very much we're finished thank you chairman thank you thank you we're on a fun