Two applications for a total of 410 homes at High Wycombe have been approved by Buckinghamshire Council.
Persimmon Homes and Redrow Homes’ fiercely-opposed joint application for 370 properties on a 23-hectare site, north of the A404 Amersham Road, between Terriers Farm and Hazlemere Recreation Ground, was approved by the council’s strategic sites committee on November 21.
Councillors then approved Find Estates’ plans for 40 homes on a neighbouring site off De Havilland Court.
Much of the opposition to the Persimmon/Redrow scheme was around lack of separation between High Wycombe and Hazlemere.
Cllr Ed Gemmell criticised the loss of trees and said at the very least, trees should be moved.
Cllr Catherine Oliver, chair of Hazlemere Parish Council, said the separation was her main objection and that the scheme fails to deliver on placemaking policy.
She said: “There’s no separation between Hazlemere and High Wycombe in this application. The development brief has also been ignored and that goes into this information in much more detail where it talks about, in its vision, there should be a substantial green wedge. There is no such green wedge.”
Steven Brown, managing director of Woolf Bond Planning, representing the applicants, said: “This is exactly the kind of development encouraged by the NPPF, that is, indeed, plan-led and it accords with the design and management objectives of the development plan – importantly – when taken as a whole.”
Councillors approved the scheme by six votes to four and approved the Find Estates scheme unanimously.
Image shows the Persimmon/Redrow masterplan. The Find Estates scheme is earmarked for the roughly square field, slightly below and left of centre of the larger site.
© Thames Tap (powered by ukpropertyforums.com).
Sign up to receive our weekly free journal, The Forum here.
