The location of the proposed development of up to 145 homes off Linchfield Road, Deeping St James

In Grantham earlier, I attended today’s meeting of the District Council’s Development Management Committee. The committee were considering the application to build up to 145 homes off Linchfield Road.

I’m happy overall with the result. The application has been approved with conditions that require the developer to pay towards improving local facilities and that require infrastructure to encourage walking and cycling as part of the development.

I spoke about the important contribution to meeting local housing need this will make. I am concerned that there are increasingly real risks of people becoming homeless here. There are a number of factors but if we seriously want to address this then more homes are going to have to be part of the solution.

As many people have said, the development of this site has been expected for many years and it does broadly seem to be a suitable location. My focus therefore has been on trying to get the best possible development for both current and future residents.

This was an outline application so only covers the general principle of there being a housing development of this size and the location of the accesses. More details about the exact layout of the development, the type of houses, and their design will have to be the subject of further planning applications.

As some will be aware, Deeping St James United Charities are, together with London and Economic Properties, the applicants. Unsurprisingly this meant that Cllr Judy Stevens who is a trustee of the charity was not able to take part in the consideration of this planning application and was required to leave the room.

More surprising was the statement from Cllr Phil Dilks, who I’d expected to be in the same position, in which he announced he’d resigned from the charity. He talked of the difficulty of the competing demands to represent residents regarding the application whilst at the same time not undermine it. Cllr Dilks was therefore able to take part.

Mike Ward, representing Deeping St James Parish Council​, Pam Byrd representing the neighbourhood plan group Deepings First​, and myself all spoke. There were some common themes including relating to the need to make provision for active travel including part of the Deepings Green Walk route.

Concerns about the density, the number of houses proposed on the site, were raised by a number of people. I think this is at least in part a result of the District Council’s allocation of this site suggesting the site would see less houses than is now proposed. I did intend to point out that it would be good to try to give a clearer idea of the numbers earlier so that we better know what to expect. By the time I spoke this has already been raised by members of the committee.

Cllr Dilks said he supported new houses but was particularly concerned about the number and made a proposal that the application should be deferred to be decided after trying to negotiate a reduction with the applicant. It was suggested that the committee must make a decision based upon the application as it stands and it is only usual to defer where the committee wants to seek clarification or further information, not to try to redesign the proposal. Cllr Dilks’ proposal was rejected.

Cllr Ashley Baxter spoke about the importance of upgrading routes to cycleways and sought an amendment to a proposed condition to more explicitly require this for east-west Footpath No. 4 as well as the new route alongside Linchfield Road.

Cllr Nick Robins was concerned about the risk of the contributions that the developer is required to pay for local facilities being reduced at a later date. He was reassured that if the developer wanted to do this they would need to make an application to do so which would likely be considered the committee.

It remains unclear who the actual house builder would be. It may be the case that the current applicants now look for a house builder to take this further and buy the site. They will then need to come up with the detailed design and receive planning permission so we can expect to see further applications relating to this site.