Campaigners' delight as council rejects plans for water draining 'swales' at housing site
An action group is celebrating after Shropshire Council refused a controversial planning application to improve water drainage at a new site in Wem.
Campaigners of Roden Grove Action Group said the council's planning department had finally seen "common sense" as they refused Fletcher Homes' application to build swales, which are intended to drain surface water off the land at Roden Grove.
The group, made up of nearby residents, said the swales had already been constructed on the site put aside for 25 houses and so the application was retrospective.
Fletcher Homes, based in Shrewsbury, put in an application in October last year to create swales on the approved public open space on the site.
In a refusal letter sent out on Wednesday, Ian Kilby, Planning Services Manager at Shropshire Council, said the revised changes to the open space would "fail to provide an acceptable level of safe and usable functional recreational space" as is required.
He added: "Despite the acknowledged environmental benefits the scheme may deliver, these environmental benefits are not outweighed by the social deficits the scheme will deliver by reducing the amount of accessible and functional open space that will remain available to local residents and public users of the space for recreation."
George Nash, spokesperson for the Roden Grove Action Group, said: "The Roden Grove Action Group is really pleased to see that the local authority and planning department have seen common sense and have pursued the antics of the developer in making sure that the planning application they submitted has been refused.
"When this application was going through letters had been sent to local residents within the area, asking for comments, but the swales had been constructed without planning permission.
Democratic
"This is a good time for the democratic process working in a positive way. There was a clear infringement of the planning process.
"By removing public open space which was in the original planning application, it would have set a precedent to other developers to use public open space for other things."
Jonathan Westwood, Managing Director at Fletcher Homes, said: "The scheme was designed by Shropshire Wildlife Trust, because we wanted to improve the bio diversity value of the development and the aim was to provide a more ambitious “multifunctional open space”, as detailed in Shropshire Council’s Planning Policy.
"It was Shropshire Wildlife’s view, that the revised scheme would provide a significant improvement and result in a far more ecologically rich site than the original scheme, which was just grassland.
"Within Shropshire Council’s decision notice they actually acknowledge the benefits of the scheme and so, we are therefore disappointed with the outcome and disagree with the decision.
"However, if Shropshire Council intend for public open space to be just mowed grass offering little bio-diversity, then we will comply with their decision."
