Page 500 - Appeal bundle 31 files

Appeal Bundle

It is considered that the scheme would not cause a significant loss of residential
amenity to the occupiers of The Barn, which is the closest residential property to the
site. It is also considered there would not be a significant adverse impact on North
Lodge to the east of the site.

It is considered that in their own right, the elevations of the proposed buildings are
reasonable. The elevations are well ordered and the detailing, choice of materials
and set back of upper floors helps to break down the scale of the buildings.
Nonetheless the buildings will clearly be of a different scale to the domestic scale
buildings around the site. This is a function of the applicant's interpretation of the
Ashurst Wood Neighbourhood Plan and the supporting text to its housing section,
which refers to the approximate capacity of this site as being 50+. It is acknowledged
that it is challenging to reconcile this assessment with criteria a) of policy ASW9
which requires schemes to 'reflect and respect the predominant character of the area
with particular regard to unit type, scale and massing'.

One of the reasons why the previous application was refused was that the scheme
for 71 units was an over development of the site and this was evidenced by the lack
of car parking on site and the hard edged nature of the scheme. Whilst the current
scheme is less hard edged and not so dominated by car parking, there is still a
significant shortfall of car parking against the District Councils standards and a larger
shortfall against the Neighbourhood Plan's car parking standards. Given the location
of the site the alternatives to the private car are more limited compared to central
locations in East Grinstead and it is therefore reasonable to expect that the likely car
parking requirements of the development are met on site.

In this case it is felt that the significant shortfall of car parking is evidence that the
scheme is still seeking to put too many units onto the site, since there is no more
space within the site to materially increase the level of car parking provided. It is
therefore felt that whilst an improvement, this reduced scheme has still not overcome
the previous reason for refusal relating to the shortfall in car parking.

With regards to affordable housing, if a scheme is not providing a policy compliant
level of 30% on site affordable housing, the requirement is for the applicants to
demonstrate that it is not viable for such provision to be provided. The financial
information that has been submitted by the applicants has been independently
assessed for the District Council and the outcome is that the District Council is not
satisfied that it has been demonstrated that the scheme cannot provide any
affordable housing. The provision of affordable housing is a corporate priority for the
Council and the therefore the failure to adequately justify providing no affordable
housing on site means there is a conflict with policy DP31 of the DP and policy
ASW15 of the AWNP.

There is a requirement for developments of this scale to provide contributions
towards the costs of infrastructure to mitigate the impacts of the development. In the
absence of a completed legal agreement to provide the required infrastructure
contributions there is a conflict with policy DP20 of the DP. As there is no legal
agreement to secure the mitigation required in relation to the Ashdown Forest
Special Protection Area there is also a conflict with policy DP17 of the DP.

BATES N0 000497