Page 209 - All files for Planning Inspectorate update

 This further application of DM/19/1025 still shows that the developer has utterly
failed to address the multitude of flaws that you yourself identified as reasons for
rejecting their earlier proposals under DM/18/1548.
 In submitting DM/19/1025 the applicant appears not only to have ignored the vast
majority of the individual reasons given for objection included in your letter to them
of 11 March 2019, but has continued to ignore the principles and policies included
in the AWNP.
 It is also a fact that all of these points were exhaustively discussed with them during
the protracted negotiations over the earlier proposals which led to the substantially
modified plan which you eventually still rejected, but which they appear now to be
intending to appeal. Clearly they were well aware of the deficiencies of their first
proposals but have, nevertheless, decided to cynically propagate them in
DM/19/1025.
 In the absence of a housing needs survey there is no demonstrable need for a
development of this scale at this time – a view reinforced by the considerable
volume of similar dwellings that are unsold and/or currently under development
within the local area.
 The design of the new buildings, whilst apparently satisfying the design panel, are
totally inappropriate to the rural nature of the locality, as both you and Ashurst
Wood Village Council have already recognised.
 Finally, for the first time, and most importantly, the work the Council itself
commissioned from DSP, reveals the extent of the proposed gross
overdevelopment of the site in comparison to the adjacent area and in
contradiction of the fundamental requirements of the Neighbourhood Plan.

Nothing else substantial has changed since you rejected DM/18/1548 on 11 March 2019. Although
the number of proposed dwellings has been reduced since then, the proposals are still in breach of
many of the Council’s own policies, and in some ways the proposals have gone backwards – notably
in the elimination of any affordable housing. Given the parallels in the deficiencies between
DM/18/1548 and DM/19/1025 we are at a loss to see how, given that the former was rejected, the
latter can possibly be approved. The long awaited identification of the developable area of the site,
and its consequent capacity, only serves to reinforce that view.

As we have made clear many times before, we have no objection to the EDF site being developed.
We would welcome a sympathetic proposal that preserves the character of the area and the village
and which meets the requirements of local and national planning policy and the specific
requirements of the AWNP. This proposal falls drastically short of all these principles.

For all these reasons we believe that these current proposals should also be rejected.

A M Tillin
Chairman, Ashbourne Park Owners’ Association

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