Regular readers will know that Havant Civic Society takes a close interest in documents submitted with planning applications, particularly when they are written by ‘transport consultants’. Planning application APP/23/00584 is currently exercising the residents of Denvilles since it appears little more than a cynical initiative by the housing developer to turn HBC’s lack of attention to traffic detail to its advantage. Take a look through the ‘Transport and Highways Technical Note‘ and you’ll find the following statement:
“Pell Frischmann is commissioned by Barratt David Wilson Homes to provide Highways and Transport Consultancy Services to support the introduction of a Farm Access at the junction of Manor Farm Close and Fifth Avenue. The Local Planning Authority and Local Highway Authority is Havant Borough Council and Hampshire County Council respectively.”
Instead of the scale drawings of fixed axle vehicles and articulated HGVs that are normally used to provide input to the ‘swept path analysis‘, we couldn’t help smiling when we noticed that the transport consultant used these rather more rural examples instead.
Reading between the lines
The developer appears to be trying to secure permanent highway access to the housing development land at Southleigh, specifically to ‘Site 18 – Land east of Manor Farm‘, extending Fifth Avenue to the east in preparation for a ‘seamless’ extension of housing into the Southleigh gap. The planning application seeks approval to construct a paved road through the existing footpath from Manor Farm Close, visible in the image below:
The Barratt’s application form ticks all the right boxes, at least as far as the developer is concerned, though the HBC Case Officer ought, perhaps, to have taken a closer look before validating it, ready for publication:
On the other side of that hedge lies a footpath running from north to south along the side of the existing Manor Farm estate, neatly landscaped with play areas a short distance on either side. The footpath, popular with residents and dog walkers of all ages, is already well established and really doesn’t need a full size tarmac road run though it, simply to provide ‘Farm Access’.
In fact, just a couple of hundred yards to the south of that footpath is the existing farm access road, properly constructed, fit for purpose and in regular use for vehicles and livestock.
Questions for HBC Planning Services
This may seem a trivial application, but it raises serious questions that you might like to raise in your comments.
1) How was this planning application able to pass the rules (if indeed there are any rules) for ‘validation’ when the documentation provided by the applicant was so clearly lacking in completeness, clarity and – let’s face it – honesty?
2) How was this planning application validated for ‘Delegated Decision’, indicating that the matter could be decided without reference to the Planning Committee, when the wider context in which it should be judged is obvious to all?
3) Why is there still no firm plan or schedule for the long-overdue Southleigh Link Road? (This is just one of the fundamental infrastructure questions that the ‘new’ Havant Borough Local Plan must address.)
Once a planning application has been validated and published on the public access planning portal, it is not just the time and effort of council officers and elected representatives that Havant Borough Council are expending, but also the time and effort taken by the general public and the Residents’ Communities to point out what should have been obvious in the first place.
With Amazon now inconveniently bottled-up in the centre of town, the missing link between Barton’s Road and the A27 is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ but a fundamental pre-requisite infrastructure development project which has been a critical omission from successive Local Plans for the past decade. Once completed, it will open up the Southleigh Gap for the housing development that HBC seek and will in some small way compensate for the future traffic impact inflicted by Amazon once that company ramps up to full scale.
To make your own comments on this Barratt David Wilson Homes planning application, please click this link before 22 September
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