Major housing development granted despite widespread objection
Richard Evans Local Democracy Reporter
A major housing scheme planned for a greenfield site in north Wales has been approved by a council’s planning committee, despite over 130 letters of objection from concerned residents.
Anwyl Construction was granted planning permission to build 152 homes on 6.6 hectares of land off Derwen Lane, including 54 affordable units, a play area, and a new 61-space car park for Ysgol Y Creuddyn.
The site sits next to existing housing but also borders protected ancient woodland, a special area of conservation, and historic landmarks, including Gloddaeth Hall, a Grade-I listed Building.
But many residents said the development would be overbearing, citing an excessive density of homes and noise pollution.
Other concerns centred around the potential strain on NHS GPs and dentists, as well as local schools, including nearby primary school Ysgol Glanwydden.
Concerns
The debate was due to take place in September but was deferred after an admin error.
Cllr David Carr raised his concerns at the meeting yesterday (Wednesday) at Conwy’s Coed Pella HQ.
“I’m always a bit worried when we are building on greenfield sites,” he said.
“We should be building on brownfield sites, and we have all the empty homes in the county.
“I’m certainly aware we do have a crisis of homelessness, and we do need more homes.”
He added: “But I’ve got real concerns about this development. As mentioned, the infrastructure – I know from my ward – the GP services are just not adequate, and the health board don’t seem to be making any reasonable moves towards increasing capacity.”
Cllr Carr was also concerned about the volume of school pupils using nearby roads.
But planning officers informed him road safety was satisfactory and claimed the NHS was targeting Welsh Government funds to attempt to tackle the health care shortages.
Backing
The proposal to back the development in line with planning officers’ advice was put forward by Cllr Alan Hunter and seconded by Cllr Austin Roberts.
Cllr Kay Redhead said: ”I do understand people’s reservations on this, but I don’t think we can turn away 54 affordable houses, given the crisis we have at the moment.
“I also don’t think we have any valid reason to go against officers’ recommendation on this. If we did, it would be liable for a call-in.”
Nine councillors voted in favour of the development and two against, with two abstentions.
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Seems like we need a lot of houses to be built but no one wants them to be built near them.
Centre for policy estimates we have a shortfall of 6.5million houses.At UK level labour have promised to built 1.5 million this parliament. So every council area in the UK needs 4000 houses to be built in the next 4 years!
Fewer and fewer babies are being born in Wales.
What does that tell us?
We can’t afford retirement.
There are are not as many babies?
Gone forever…
All of these large scale building projects do nothing but effectively facititate a form of settler colonialism. No-one cares a damn about their effect on the local community, culture, or what’s left of our language.
The planning officers seem to be smoking crack. If they keep making decisions based on “attempts” rather than actually seeing ongoing improvements the situation is going to get worse and worse. The NHS in Wales is struggling, there’s no equivocating, it doesn’t have the staff, it doesn’t have the space (never mind the car parking space), the GPs can’t even cope with the number of patients they’re expected to see each day. They’re also taking good quality arable land away. Unfortunately the entire area looks like it’s been over developed. Still a better place would be off Bryn y Bia… Read more »