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Development Control - TrustNews Dec 02

Members travelling along Southgate Street may have noticed that No 21A, the site of Herbert's now defunct hairdressing business, is up for sale again, this time with the added attraction of having planning permission for 7 flats with a shop below. This will have increased the value of the plot, and it seems unlikely that any developer buying the plot would be prepared to embark upon the permitted scheme because of the cost of the very high standard of materials, detailing and workman-ship that would be necessary for its success.

The scheme for flats on the Charles House site on the corner of Sussex Street and Upper High Street is another development that has been sold with planning permission, and the new owners are now seeking variations of the permitted plans.

Some applicants seem to take no notice at all of the reasons given for refusing a proposal. A request to place a satellite dish on the front of 1 The Broadway, part of a listed terrace and facing onto the statue of King Alfred, was refused in April because of the siting and lack of information about its size and position. An identical request has just been made, to install a black 3 ft-wide dish on the light-coloured front façade, in the same prominent position on the building that was refused previously.

A new application for 6 Hampton Lane is an example of when some, but sadly not all, of the reasons for refusing the previous scheme have been taken on board. Fired with enthusiasm to fulfil the directive to increase densities, in August the applicants proposed to put two 4bedroom houses and a block of three flats onto a plot, which had an expired permission for two houses. Never mind that Hampton Lane is a single-track lane with no pavements and that the poorly-designed supposedly 'period' buildings and their layout were uncharacteristic of the locality, cram 'em all in was the order of the day, with minimal landscaping and lots of hard-standing for parking cars - it wasn't even clear whether any trees would have to be felled. This scheme was refused on the grounds that the access road wasn't wide enough and that the form, siting and design would be out of keeping with, and therefore detrimental to, the locality. A new outline application proposes two 2-bedroom houses, linked by their garages, and a detached 5-bedroom house, with little landscaping evident, apart from drives and hard-standing. Although the layout remains atypical of the area, the density is more acceptable, but again there were no details about trees (save possibly in a plan so reduced as to be illegible). In view of the previous scheme's depressingly low standard of design, we felt it was essential to have some idea of their appearance before any permission was given, and have therefore objected to the application.

Shione Carden