Samas Roneo – Good news / bad news ?

One of the items up for discussion and decision at the development control meeting of the 7^th November is the recent application by BNP Paribas / Astor Property Group with regards to the Samas Roneo site and adjacent field.

The application which is for 93 properties, provoked to a certain extent the usual response to any sort of building / planning application, along the lines of not in my back yard, along with a reasonable number of valid concerns around the amount of additional traffic that the proposal would bring with the likely hood of a minimum of 90 additional cars on the road.

There were however some elements of support for the development, mainly around the idea of removing the factory from existence, but also in terms of support to one of the local schools who currently low in numbers quite likes the idea of a potential additional 90+ homes with kids.

Interestingly despite the comments above there have as detailed in the report only being 5 letters of objection to the proposals (so far) with those objections highlighting concerns around traffic impact, employment land availability, housing supply and the environmental impact of development.

That said however, the recommendation from the planning officers is for refusal, which in part gets the good news, bad news commentary, with I suppose it been good news to those not wanting developments / having traffic concerns etc but bad news to those that wanted the former Samas Roneo warehouse removing.

In terms of the refusal recommendation, the grounds it’s recommended for refusal on are, around a lack of affordable housing being offered by the developer, along with a failure to make adequate arrangements for traffic access to the site of the proposed Gamesley Station.

The report will now go for discussion and decision at the next meeting of development control, which may or may not back the recommendation of the officers.

You can read the report yourself by clicking here, but I would suspect that this won’t be the last we will hear on the proposal, with additional information on changes to the site layout, and amount of affordable housing been offered, still being in a state of flux or at least they were at the time of the report been written.