Watton Lane/Broad Lane planning applications saga

The house building mania in and around Bridport continues. You might have thought with the Vearse Farm plan for 760 houses (which the local plan wants to raise to 930 houses) there would be a reticence from Dorset Council to approve yet more housing particularly on land designated as AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). But further house building plans and work continues on many sites.

The reality is that we are seeing a progressive urbanisation of Bridport without the investment in or capacity for the necessary infrastructure. Bridport’s status as a small market town counts for nothing with the council seeing it as an easy and desirable place to meet their government imposed housing targets.

An application to build a single bungalow on a field adjoining Watton Lane and Broad Lane was approved in 2018. This field is AONB designated and forms part of the panoramic view from West Bay.

It does not matter to the council that Broad Lane is totally unsuitable (largely single track, no footpaths, no lighting etc) for more housing or that the occupants will have to be car users making a mockery of their climate emergency declaration and intention to only build houses in sustainable locations.

In 2019 a further application was made for 2 more houses. The planning committee for the reasons given were totally unimpressed and rejected the application by an 8 to 1 majority. However, an appeal was made by the land owner, Mr Norman, who was in the news recently when he was fined for multiple food hygiene breaches after his Bradpole based slaughterhouse was found to be significantly unclean.

Despite all the objections the planning inspector decided to grant the appeal and approve the planning application ignoring local democracy and the firm views of the councillors on the planning committee.

Now the saga continues with a further application to increase the number of houses to three – two of which are 4 bed houses covering a much larger area than in the original application.

It looks like there is a “salami” style process going on where new applications are made for increasing number of houses in the expectation that the planning committee/officers will find it difficult to refuse each successive increased application having approved the previous one. It should be noted that the site could potentially allow for 20+ dwellings!

The councils actions are scandalous – this application has been marked for delegated approval and will therefore not come before the planning committee preventing neighbours and other interested parties from presenting their objections in person. Also the notification of the application has not been sent to neighbours. It almost seems the council want to get this application through on the quite with the minimum of objections.

So much for just one bungalow in the corner of the field!

So what can you do? Please help to get this latest application properly considered and refused by:

Going on to the council planning website and putting in your objections. The link below takes you to the application (P/FUL/2021/01762) and you can click on the box at the bottom right of the page to make comments on the application. The deadline is 1 September so please be prompt.

https://planning.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/plandisp.aspx?recno=236530

Emailing the following with a request that there is proper consultation with the application being discussed in public at a committee meeting. Just quote the application number in your email and say you object.

Mr Shortell,Chair of planning – cllrdavid.shortell@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk

Mr Pipe, Vice Chair – magpiebillpipe@freeuk.com

Mike Garrity Head of planning – mike.garrity@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk

2 thoughts on “Watton Lane/Broad Lane planning applications saga”

  1. Hi. In response to Phil Summerton’s email re the Watton Lane application, I would like to confirm that I have both added comments to the planning application today, and emailed Councillor David Shortell making my objection known and asking for a full public consultation vs the current ‘stealth’ process. Hoping it may help. In relation to this Watton Lane case, is it not worth involving local media/news/social media platforms? To raise concerns about the non-transparent manner in which WDDC appear to be operating?
    Happy to provide copies.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.