MAJOR plans to build 544 new homes in High Wycombe’s Gomm Valley have been refused permission as Taylor Wimpey’s appeal was dismissed.
Developer Taylor Wimpey appealed to the Planning Inspectorate against Buckinghamshire Council’s failure to make decision on its application within the necessary timeframe, due to what the unitary authority claimed was the developer’s failure to give it the necessary information in time.
But planning inspector Matthew Woodward dismissed that appeal in a decision on Wednesday (September 11), bringing an end to a 10-month appeal process.
He said that due to traffic concerns, Taylor Wimpey’s proposed development conflicted with High Wycombe’s local plan, the 361-page document specifying how new homes can be built and where in the town they should be located.
The developer said that vehicle access to its hundreds of new homes would be from Hammersley Lane, Gomm Road, and Cock Lane. The inspector referred to the council’s concerns about the site’s impact on the already-busy A40 London Road, which leads onto Gomm Road.
Bucks Council said that if it had been able to make a decision on Taylor Wimpey’s plans, the impact on highways would have been among the 17 reasons it would have refused to grant permission for the new homes.
The council’s submission to the public enquiry read: “There is the reasonable prospect of driver frustration leading to attempts to jump the red-light or join the congested A40, resulting in blocking of the A40 and the risk of collision with other vehicles.
“No capacity improvements are proposed at this junction even though required as part of the site allocation policy.
“Therefore, due to the lack of capacity improvements, the modelled likelihood that the exit of Gomm Road will be blocked during the afternoon peak and given the lack of qualitative analysis of traffic behaviours in such circumstances, this would represent an unacceptable highway safety risk.”
Wycombe’s local plan sets out a range of necessary transport works that a developer wanting to build on the Gomm Valley site, known as ‘HW6’, would need to follow. These include a requirement for a contribution towards a package of improvements for the A40, including at the Gomm Road junction.
In his conclusion, Mr Woodward wrote: “I find conflict with Local Plan Policy HW6 overall and several other policies in relation to transportation and highways.”
The news that planning permission was refused was welcomed by the Hands off Gomm Valley group, which campaigned for 10 years against the development of the site after it was set up by local residents Ian Morton and Paula Lee in 2014.
Ian Morton said “We welcome the planning inspectors decision to throw out Taylor Wimpey’s appeal and refuse this planning application.
“It would have destroyed the beautiful Gomm Valley and cause traffic chaos to residents in Wycombe Marsh and the surrounding area.
“We now urge Bucks Council to take immediate steps to protect Gomm Valley so that our farmers can continue to feed the nation and residents no longer have to fear the next planning application.”
Taylor Wimpey said its plans would provide up to 544 ‘much needed, high quality, adaptable homes’, 48 per cent of which would have been affordable, including first homes, shared ownership, and affordable rented.
The developer’s plans also said that five per cent of the homes proposed would have been ‘custom-build’ to help the council to meet the demand for this type of property.
Proposals also included a primary school and early years facility, a flexible community facility, community orchards and growing areas, as well as ‘integrated cycle and walking paths’ within the site.
However, campaigners have welcomed the Planning Inspectorate’s refusal of planning permission for the plans, which received more than 500 objections, many of which related to traffic and transport issues.
Some of the council’s other objections to the proposals included ‘inadequate’ cycling links to the site, ‘insufficient information’ about parking at the proposed school, ‘harm to local landscape character’ and ‘substandard parking bays’ that ‘fail to make adequate provisions for wheelchair users’.
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