Developers want to build on land in front of us?

brightondave

Hi, we live in the last house on the right of a cul de sac with 4 other neighbours on the same as us.
Our road about 50 meters long and quite thin, parked cars kerbside only allow for a cars width to pass, so much so that recycling and refuse trucks have to reverse in up as far as our property.
A guy turned up at our house today and gave my wife details of a proposed development across the road from us on an empty plot of land that has been unused for the last 15 years since we have been here, unused primarily because back in the day there used to be a petrol station on site until there was a serious fuel leak from underground tanks which contaminated the land and it caused a problem for the next number of years aith anybody building on it. We are separated on the other side of our little no through road by a wooden fence and the whole plot measures approx 40 yds x 30 yds.
Enter the guy with the two pieces of A4 , explaining that he would like our and our neighbours views on what they propose.
The proposal is either two 3 storey blocks of 8 flats with parking using our little road as an approach to them. (This is with a main road at the front of the development) crazy!!
Or two lots of 4 two storey houses with gardens facing us and our neighbours and parking.
From our point of view if one of these has to go ahead in the name of progress we would probably prefer the flats and not the houses with gardens as it would minimalize evening noise, dogs barking etc etc.
We would prefer access to this development to be from the main road and not to enter into our little road as multiple flats to the right of us already has a through route to their properties which is acceptable at the moment.
What are the aspects of this that would be worth challenging? whether we have any say in which one will go ahead? and the problem relating to limited access to our road instead of using the main road in front of the land?
Also regarding the contamination previously is there any due diligence they have to do with that?
Your thought please. Thankyou.

davidmcn

Contamination - yes, the planners will want evidence of tests and remediation having been carried out suitable for residential use (flats may be easier for them from that point of view, as acceptable levels of contaminants are higher for communal landscaping etc than for individual gardens). In practice any funders or purchasers are going to ask the question anyway, if it's something as obvious as the last occupier being a petrol station.

Traffic access - is there perhaps a good reason for not taking access directly from the main road? How "main" is the road? If there's fast traffic or e.g. other nearby junctions then planners may not be keen on adding another direct access off it.

zagubov

It may be that the busy main road won't allow as easy access from both directions IYSWIM.

Not that that's such a big problem in the grand scheme of things but it might look offputting to potential buyers.

Wouldn't the lower houses rather than flats make your street less of a concrete canyon (as many streets here in London are often described)?

EachPenny

davidmcn wrote: »

Contamination - yes, the planners will want evidence of tests and remediation having been carried out suitable for residential use (flats may be easier for them from that point of view, as acceptable levels of contaminants are higher for communal landscaping etc than for individual gardens). In practice any funders or purchasers are going to ask the question anyway, if it's something as obvious as the last occupier being a petrol station.

Agreed. The developer is likely to go to the council with a sob story that remediating the land will cost a fortune and therefore they need a high-density development to fund it. The council in turn will probably accept this on the basis a high-density development is preferable to the site being left unused for another 15 years.

I was involved in a scheme not entirely dissimilar to this where the developer dealt with the contamination by simply digging everything out to make a basement parking area.

davidmcn wrote: »

Traffic access - is there perhaps a good reason for not taking access directly from the main road? How "main" is the road? If there's fast traffic or e.g. other nearby junctions then planners may not be keen on adding another direct access off it.

Exactly the question I was going to ask. There is a presumption against making new accesses off 'main' roads if alternatives exist.

OP, your best strategy on that might be to ask that the developer uses some of their land to slightly widen the access road and/or create a turning area - point out the difficulty refuse and recycling vehicles already have.

It might be worth finding out who from the refuse/recycling department comments on planning applications and start a dialogue with them before the planning application is formally submitted. One way to do that is to find other recent planning applications in your area (they should be online) and check the details of the consultees, one of them is often the waste/recycling team. The alternative is to contact your local councillor and ask them to visit, preferably when the refuse vehicle is due to arrive.

Doozergirl

There is a large document called Manual for Streets which sets out how streets should be laid out.

In my county, Worcs, we also have the Streetscape Design Guide.

It states that the maximum number of dwellings on a shared driveway, which has less requirements than adopted road, is six. Now it sounds like your cul de sac might be adopted and wide enough to qualify as something more than a 'shared driveway', but a lack of parking provision affects how that works in practice and means that it may not be suitable to cope with additional pressure from flats.

There are some rules about rubbish collection and emergency vehicle access, regardless of whether it is a drive or an adopted road.

In brief:

For rubbish:
paragraph 6.8.9 of Manual for Streets.
“residents should not be required to carry waste more than 30 m (excluding
any vertical distance) to the storage point; • waste collection vehicles should
be able to get to within 25 m of the storage point”
Paragraph 6.8.10 goes on to state that
“Based on these parameters, it may not be necessary for a waste vehicle to
enter a cul-de-sac less than around 55 m in length, although this will involve
residents and waste collection operatives moving waste the maximum
recommended distances, which is not desirable.”

Emergency vehicles:
Paragraph 6.7.2 talks of the access requirement under Building Regulations for
emergency vehicles and states:
 there should be vehicle access for a pump appliance within 45 m of single
family houses;
 Fire service vehicles should not have to reverse more than 20 m.

The upshot of this means that there needs to be a decent turning circle for a fire appliance - ours locally are 10.5 metres long.

Your little road may qualify under these but it's worth checking. There's an entire rabbit hole you can go down, but this is a couple of bits that might help.

AlexMac

Be careful what you say to

brightondave wrote: »

... the guy with the two pieces of A4 , explaining that he would like our and our neighbours views on what they propose...

You don't want the developer to be able to say to the local Planning Authority that they have informally consulted all nearby residents and altered their scheme accordingly

Your real opportunity to say what you think will come at the stage when "the guy" (or whoever) submits a formal Planning application to your local Council (or Planning Authority, which is rarely different), at which stage there will be formal neighbour consultation and the opportunity to comment in writing. Usually a tight 6-8 week deadline for this./ Anyone can comment, wheter or not you are written to.

Don't miss this; my Council only writes formal consultation letters to immediately adjoining neighbours; literally the houses next door to the plot, and not necessarily those a couple of doors away or across the street. They will probably stick a sign on a lamp post on the adjacent main road and will almost certainly post it on the Planning pages of their website, or via a link there, so you will be able to keep checking.

In my area, developments are often passed on the nod by Council Officers using "delegated powers" unless a number of objections (in our case, eight) are received, in which case the matter is referred to a Planning Committee of Councillors (the people you elect) where objectors can give brief oral representations to back up their earlier written (or online) objections.

So as regards "what is worth challenging"; stoke up your neighbours to object, remembering that only "material considerations" count. Google these- for example at
https://www.planningportal.co.uk/faqs/faq/4/what_are_material_considerations
e.g.
- "Overlooking/loss of privacy
- Loss of light or overshadowing
- Parking
- Highway safety
- Traffic
- Noise (but not temporary noise or nuisance during construction)
- Effect on listed building and conservation area
- Layout and density of building
- Design, appearance and materials..."

and don't waste time rambling on about stuff which doesn't count- such as "dogs barking" or (if any flats are to be social housing), concerns about your property being devalued!

And if it does go ahead, it probably won't be as bad as you fear. Think about whether, if when you bought your house there had already been flats or houses on the site, you'd not have bought yours?

In our narrow street, a former back lane behind a terrace of big houses, some people seem to object to any more "garden grab" or infill development even though that's just the kind of house they, themselves, live in!

We therefore tend to be fairly tolerant as a residents' association, and only object to real "over-development" proposals; too many homes crammed onto a small site; too many storeys in a street where most are only 2 levels high... And in consequence, we have managed to help Councillors stop, on avearge one in five of the last few new Planning proposals.

So very worthwhile if you are persistent, reasonable and organised

LilElvis

Re the contamination. It's easily resolved - they take samples, analyse it and the results determine course of action. Former heavy industry sites have been brought back into use for residential building after soil remediation, so a former petrol station won't be that hard. It's what my husband does for a living.