Okay Chair you are now live. Thank you. Good morning everybody and welcome to South Cams District Council Planning Committee. I'm John Bachelor and I'm Chair of the committee. My Vice-Chair Councillor Haylings is not with us today so I've asked Councillor Thane to act as Vice-Chair for this meeting. So members can I put it to you that you do you agree that this appointment is made by affirmation? Agreed. Anyone against? No, no one against good. Okay so Councillor Thane that will take the role of Vice-Chair. Councillor Thane would you just confirm that you're with us? Councillor Peter Thane, Shelford Ward here and happy to act as Vice-Chair. Lovely, thank you very much. We're supported along the top table by the following officers. There's Chris Carter who's delivery manager strategic science. Yes, we do introduce ourselves. Thank you Chair. Good morning everybody. Next is Stephen Reed the senior planning lawyer. Are you with us? Good morning Chair. Thank you and Ian Senior from Democratic Services who will be taking the minutes. Are you with us Mr Senior? Thank you very much. I would introduce individual case officers when I invite them to speak. So just a few housekeeping announcements. Please make sure that your device is fully charged and switch your cameras and microphones off unless you're invited to do otherwise. When you're invited to address the meeting please make sure that your microphone is switched on. When you finish addressing the meeting please turn off your microphone immediately and your camera. Speak slowly and clearly and please do not talk over or interrupt anyone. Please ensure that you have switched off or silenced any other devices you have so that they do not interrupt proceedings. The non-procedure planning committee is to take recorded votes and we will continue with this tradition unless there is a clear affirmation. When we move to a vote on any item and there is not clear affirmation, I will ask for a roll call to be taken. I will then ask committee members to speak into the microphone so that their votes is clear both to committee and to those watching the webcast. Members should respond for against or abstain when their name is called. Committee members present. I will now invite each of you to introduce yourself. Members after I call your name please turn on your camera and microphone. Wait two seconds and say your name and the word you represent so that your presence may be noted. Please remember to turn off your camera and your microphone after your introductions. So I'm John Bachelor, I'm committee chairman and I'm the member for Councilor Binton. Councillor Bradman please. Good morning. I'm Councillor Bradman from Milton and Water Beach Ward. Thank you. Councillor Cahn. Hello I'm Councillor Cahn. I'm the member for Houston, Inkington and Orchard Park. Thank you. Councillor Dornton. I understand you are substituting for Councillor Halings. I am. Yes thank you. Councillor Clair Dornton, Fenderton and Fulbourne Ward. Right. Councillor Peter Fein please. Peter Fein, Shelford Ward. Thank you. Councillor Dr Hawkins. To me Hawkins, Coleycott Ward. Thank you. Councillor Ripeth. Judith Ripeth, Milton and Water Beach. Good morning. Thank you. Councillor Roberts. But my camera work turn on Chairman. Deborah Roberts, District Councilor for Foxton Ward. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Heather Williams. Heather Williams, I represent the Mordens Ward. Thank you. Councillor Richard Williams. Thank you Chair. I'm Richard Williams. I'm the member for the Wittlesford Ward. Thank you. And Councillor Wright. Councillor Nick Wright, Member for Caxton and Patworth. Thank you very much. So I can confirm that the meeting is quiet. If at any time members leave the meeting, would they please make that fact known to me so that it can be recorded in the minutes? So members of the public are aware if a councillor is absent for any part of the presentation of or debate about an agenda item then they may not vote on that item. That includes technical issues I'm afraid. We have several public speakers today and I would just like to explain how public speaking will work. This meeting is being broadcast live via the council's website and public speakers are reminded that they are participating in this meeting. You are consenting to being broadcast into the use of the images and sound recordings for webcasts and training purposes. You will each have three minutes to address the committee. When you start speaking we will start the timer. Please ensure you switch the microphone on before you speak. When your time has elapsed we will ask you to conclude your speech. Once you have finished speaking we may wish to ask you questions. Please be concise in your response. If there are no more questions you may leave the meeting and continue to watch via the webcast. Committee members are reminded that any questions to speakers should be for clarification purposes only and the process for this shall be as follows. I will ask if there are any questions. If you do have questions please ask to speak via the chat function. The committee can only consider planning reasons for or against the application. The committee cannot consider general observations about the development site. The committee cannot consider comments from public speakers made outside of their allotted speaking time. Therefore request that those registered do not interrupt outside of their speaking time. Once the committee has heard from all speakers and planning officers we will form views on the application. The planning committee will then vote. The outcome is decided by majority vote and in the event of a time I as chair have casting votes. When planning committee members vote please can they ensure that they identify themselves and speak into the microphone so that the vote is understood by committee and those watching the webcast. Members are reminded that they identify whether they are for against or abstain when their name is called. Now move on to item two which is the apologies. Mr. Senior are there any apologies please? I just had one apology from Councillor Pippa Halings and her substitute is councillor Claire Daunton. Thank you very much. We then move on to item three which is declarations of interest. Do any members have interest to declare in relation to any item of business on this agenda? If an interest subsequently becomes apparent later in the meeting please would you raise it at that point. Categories of interest are listed on your agenda. Do we have any declarations of interest? Yes chair I've got one. Right that's Richard Williams. Yeah a non-pecuniary interest in item seven. I'm the ward member for Whittlesford. I'm also a member of Whittlesford Parish Council so obviously this application has come up in that context or in those contexts but obviously I will be considering the matter afresh today. Thank you very much. Councillor Thane do you have any others? Chairman it's myself. Heather Williams. Heather Williams wanted to speak chair. Okay thank you chairman just a non-pecuniary interest. I'm the local member for one of the enforcement reports on Arrington which I request and obviously have been involved in it but as it's not a decision making report I think it's not you know not something of consequence just for the record. Thank you very much and was there another one Councillor? Martin Kahn please. Yes I'm the local member for Orchard Park and I have been in meetings where it's been discussed with the Parish Council but I'm approaching the matter afresh. Thank you very much for that. Is that everybody? All right thank you. We therefore move on then to item four. Is now joining. So we're moving on to item four which are the minutes of three meetings. They are on the 27th of July 26th of August and the 9th of September. I take those separately so if I could go to page one item four. So these are the minutes for Wednesday the 27th of July 2020. Are there any issues of accuracy please? Nope. So can I take it that I can sign these minutes as a true record of that meeting? Anyone against that? No we're all happy with that are we? There is some background noise on the line could everybody who is online please make sure that their microphone is muted thank you. We move on to the next set of minutes which is the minutes for Wednesday the 26th of August 2020. Any issues of accuracy on these minutes please? Yes chair. Yes councillor. I am recorded as having abstained in relation to item five on page seven I actually voted against. Right okay I'm sure that will be noted then thank you. Any other points of accuracy on these minutes? No in that case. Chairman just to say as I was about to present at the meeting I can't comment the accuracy and therefore we'll be abstaining. Right thank you very much that is no problem. It's councillor Rippith here the same for me I wasn't present so I'll be abstaining. Thank you very much okay with with those provisos can I sign these as a true record of this meeting? Does anyone against that? No okay so the minutes of the 26th are agreed. We move on to the third set of minutes which are for Wednesday the 9th of September 2020. Any matters of accuracy on these please? Yes chairman councillor Bradnam. Yes please. Thank you chairman just a really minor thing on item seven which was Cotnam on page 16 of our agenda pack sort of in the last full line of the paragraph there it said the motion had been approved and I'm sure it's supposed to say the motion had been approved with an H. Yeah okay thank you very much for that. Anything else members? No are you there happy that I sign these as a true record of that meeting? Agreed. Agreed. No one against? No good okay so we have agreed those minutes and we move on to the substance of today's meeting. We're now on agenda five that's on page 19 of your agenda papers. This is application S4207 stroke 19 RM reserve matters that's for land east of Rempton Road of Cotnam. The proposal is for approval of matters reserved for appearance, landscaping, layout and scale following outline planning permission S2876 stroke 16 stroke OLL for a residential now joining comprising 154 dwellings including access. The applicant is the company this land the key material considerations will be outlined by the presenting officer. This is a departure and the application is brought to committee because the officer recommendation of approval conflict with the recommendation in the Kotlin parish council. So today the officer recommendation is approval the presenting officer is Michael Sexton. Mr. Sexton would you do your presentation please? Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Just one quick point of clarification before I begin the presentation on the website where the committee agenda is published. The document that's published is appendix two Kotlin parish council comments in brackets August 2020 should say appendix two Kotlin parish council in brackets September 20. When you open the document you do get the document you're supposed to it's purely the name of the document that is incorrect and in conversations with Ian if we were to fix that we would have had to take the entire committee agenda down. So the document itself is fine it's just so it's on record there is a typo in that. Thank you I'm sure that's noted. Thank you. Chair if you could confirm you can see a presentation on the screen please. I can. Excellent yes so this is a reserved matters application for appearance landscaping and layout and scale following an outline plan commission for residential development comprising 154 dwellings into the access at lands northeast of Brampton road Kotlin. Very important to start off with the fact that Kotlin has a neighborhood plan. The neighborhood plan was due to proceed to referendum on the 26th of March 2020 because of the Covid 19 pandemic the referendum was suspended and government guidance is that no more no neighborhood plan referendums can take place before May 2021 but national planning policy guidance practice guidance paragraph 107 has been released in response to the Covid pandemic does make it clear that where a local planning authority is issued is the decision statement detailing its intention to send the neighborhood plan to referendum which is the case for Kotlin neighborhood plan then significant weights in decision making can be given to that neighborhood plan as far as it is material to the application so on this application significant weight is given to the Kotlin neighborhood plan. Within the neighborhood plan there are a range of policies the particular ones that are relevant to this application assets out in the report and on the slide in front of you are landscape character heritage assets heritage character local green space development framework large site design recreation sports hub and sports facilities. Also important to know that Kotlin has a village design statement sbd adopted in 2007 the neighborhood plan draws heavily on that village design statement and the policies and guidance within that document and says in paragraph 1.5 that the design principles and some Kotlin specific policies have been retained or adapted within the neighborhood plan from the village design statements they very much work hand in hand both given significant weight for the application. So this is the application site for context we're on the sort of western edge of Kotlin heading out to to Rampton site outlined in red as a bit of background so outline planning application for a hundred digital dwellings including access was allowed as appeal on the 10th of May 2018. As part of that outline commission there were three conditions which are relevant to the reserve matters application in the reserve mass application needed to be supported by a precautionary working methodology for protected species that has been submitted and found acceptable by the ecology officer as part of the application condition six required details of housing mix which has been supplied and has been found to record with top policy and that's in the event condition seven in the event that any residential development was to be provided on land that's currently laid out as sports as playing pitches the proposal would be required to provide a equivalent area within the development sites but as will come on to the applicative residential element of the development does not encroach on to existing recreation land so condition seven is not triggered. Very briefly to highlight to members there are a lot of details reserved by condition on the outline consent 24 pre-commencement conditions in total which include sort of standard traffic management plan drainage conditions contamination conditions it also reserves details of boundary treatment and hard and soft landscaping although elements of that have been provided in support of reserve matters application. So since the outline application was granted there has been a non-material amendment application made to the outline application to add the words up to into the description that is more common that an outline plan permission seeks up to a certain number of dwellings whereas the original one actually said comprising 54 dwellings so this non-material amendment was approved and it does give flexibility as will come on to that you can go up to 154 dwellings. The reserve matters application as amended actually sees consent for 147 dwellings but it does fall within the established principle of the development of the site. Part of the reason why it seeks a slightly reduced number of residential properties is because the red line boundary for the reserve matters application is approximately two hectares smaller than the outlined red line boundary. This is best illustrated from this extract from the design and access statement. It details in paragraph 2.4 that Cambridge County Council decided to retain some of the land to be used for future school expansion. The Cotton and Primary School is here. Appreciate it's not particularly well shown clear on the map so the county has not given the original applicants have not put forward all the land to school at the outline stage as part of the reserve matters application. So the area in blue was part of the outline application it is not part of the reserve matters application. Just for a brief context of the area an aerial photograph within the red line boundary of the application you have this area here of Les King wood which is obviously a wooded area it is designated as a local green space within the Cotton Labourhood plan. You have the recreation existing recreation space here and then open land forming the rest of the site. Very briefly just in context running members who have not had the benefit of visiting the site. The site is relatively flat although the land does slope down as you go north towards Les King wood. So these photos are looking across the existing development on Robinson Road across the existing recreation ground again existing recreation ground and then view from the recreation ground towards Les King wood. Again just walking through Les King wood there are some informal footways. This is standing on the edge of Les King wood so you get the impression here that land does slope down as you go north on the site and then just walking back along Robinson Road here you can see ground levels falling and just another view across the site. So this is the site plan for the reserve matters application. 147 dwellings are proposed 88 of which are market properties 59 of which are affordable properties which is the 40%. Requirements. It's a very spacious layout it's approximately 17 dwellings per hectare when you look at the developer area of the site. You'll note that there's no development or encroachment into Les King wood and in very much in response to the neighbour plan policy there's a lot of permeability into Les King wood to better enhance that area of public space which is obviously currently present in the village but it's somewhat detached from the existing residential development so this scheme does look to respond positively to how it relates to Les King wood. All of the properties along the northern boundary of the site front on to Les King wood as well right so you don't have any sort of harsh boundary treatments as the rear of properties so positive design response in that respect. These are just some slightly more zoomed in versions of the master plan so you can see a bit more context. There's obviously a small section of dwellings here which sit against the existing properties along Rempton road should say all of the properties meets or exceed residential space standards apart from about half a dozen. The only reason they don't comply is because they're lacking slightly in internal storage space. It's not a policy requirement secured at outline stage so these properties don't have to comply with space standards but they do really on the whole and also the amount of garden space is very generous as you can see on these sites each property has a very generous amount of means to space that would meet or exceed the level set out by the council's district design guide and the back-to-back distances would also meet or exceed the council's finish design guidance so for the future occupiers very generous development has been put forward and again here you can just see the relationship with lesking wood and the additional permeability into the wood which is a positive design response. I'm sure we'll come to this within the debate so I don't want to touch on it too much now but there are 10 house types proposed across the development they are spread across the development and again that's a positive design response to the neighborhood plan seeking to have variation in design and architecture so you don't have repetitive rows of dwellings and where you do get perhaps five dwellings of the same type in one row there's an adjustment to the material palette which is again responding to the design the neighborhood plan in terms of not having that repetition. There are affordable houses obviously within the site they are distributed well throughout the site in clusters of sort of four to 12 which is broad in line with the policy adopted excuse me affordable housing SPD it is supported by our affordable housing team and they are obviously an integral part of the site finished to the same design and architectural standards so we are supportive of how the tenured types and of the layout of affordable housing has been provided. In terms of scale and appearance everything is sort of two story properties and some of the properties are relatively tall they do range from 8.5 meters to about 10.1 meters in ridge height the reason for that slightly higher ridge than the existing development long round-to-road is again the development is picked up on the cotton and finish design statement which states that there are sort of steeply pitched rooms is is parts a design feature within the village so the properties don't tend to have residential accommodation in the roof space they do have steep rich pitched roofs in response to the design statement so that's why they are slightly taller but they are two story properties. Here you can see on the street scene four which is the looking across the field towards the four of the road behind Rampton Road where you do have these five properties at the same they have changed the material and again that's responsive to the neighborhood plan requirements they just give you an idea of the scale and the subtle variations as well in terms of the scale of each house type as well just to provide further variations in design terms. These are just an example floor plans which you would have seen in the drawings pack that was circulated have really touched on it but they do all meet what you see national space standards except for half a dozen where they're slightly lacking on internal storage space and again it's just great to show the the scale and the variation in design across the house type so I won't go through all 10 as part of this presentation but just to give members a feel for the very architectural variation. This is an example of a masonette just to highlight that there is a every each masonette has a communal garden space and all first four masonettes also have a private balcony space so again the level of external community space afforded to each unit is either meets or exceeds the council's design guide and obviously that's very important in light of the impact that the community has had on such masses and although landscaping is reserved by condition there is a lot of detail about how the landscaping would take place within the site there is a lot of additional tree planting as you can see this includes tree planting within private garden spaces that is something that is mentioned in the neighbourhood plan as a requirement so again the the layout and the planting is responsive to that particular part of the neighbourhood plan policy there is I'm sure it will come up again in a debate there is some existing hedgerows that will be lost within the site that is in part because of the visibility space on the front of the site but the biodiversity document submitted in support of this application does detail that although about 250 meters of hedgerow is lost there's an excess of 300 meters of hedgerows being put in by this development comprising five or more native species so there will be an overall net gain in in terms of hedge planting and biodiversity these next three slides are just the seed some CGI images of the development this is the northern entrance to the site which if I just jump back a slide is this this entrance here so you can see dwellings here are set back from the the public highway and that various spaces layouts varying materials and architectural language throughout the site again responsive to neighbourhood plan policies this is I suppose going in through that northern entrance and turning the corner you've got a view through to the the leap which I should have mentioned sorry earlier is is central at the heart of this development and then a third CGI just looking across the leap again the variation in materials and architectural language and detailing you can see on the house types to create that that different character and variation and sort of ease of movement through through the site through the leap very much at the heart lots of good passive surveillance over the the leap area and throughout the site as a whole and there is a set of reports there is one element of the proposal or one neighbourhood plan policy where the proposed development certainly does conflict with the requirements of the policy that is policy COH1 landscape character which looks at several vistas around the village which are of the important views from around the village to various site points in and around the village the so the policy says as appropriate to their scale and location development proposal should seek to take into account the following vistas in this instance it's Vista 2 that's the important vista and that is a view from ramps and roads to all states church which is obviously a listed church it's about 1.8 kilometres from here and by superimposing the application site you can see how the vista the vista cuts through the development and members will know in appendix four for this report there is a bit of background to Vista 2 in the in an earlier version of the cotton neighbourhood plan the vista was shown to be here on the northeastern edge of the site outline planning consent was granted in May 2018 and so it wouldn't have been necessarily a conflict at that point then the June 2018 draft of the neighbourhood plan moved the vista to ramps and road so this vista point actually appeared after the outline consent was granted that's detailed in appendix four but nonetheless the referendum version of the plan which we're attaching was a significant weight to we do have to acknowledge that it does conflict with this policy to try and show members again if not being to site this is a photograph taken from ramps and road from roughly the where the vista point is shown on the map across to all saints church appreciate it's not particularly clear on the photo it wasn't that much clearer on site to be honest but the church tower is here I jump forward that's a slightly zoomed in version so you can see the view of the church a very limited view of the church but nonetheless it is there that is what the policy is is referring to so quite a long presentation and there's probably a lot of points to cover in the debates I haven't gone into each neighbourhood plan detailed too much but obviously the key material considerations are compliance with the outline plan commission officers are satisfied that any requirements from the outline plan commission have been met within the reserve maps application housing provision including affordable housing has touched on that it meets the mix the affordable housing tenure and distribution is acceptable open space provision is in line with the requirements of the 106 agreements so we're also satisfied in that terms then it's the reserve matters details of layout scale appearance and landscaping I think on the whole and on balance officers are satisfied that it does comply with the neighbourhood plan with the obvious exception of the vista and the report does acknowledge that it would conflict with that policy and then other matters of biodiversity largely reserved by condition flood risk and drainage obviously there's a level of information that comes in with this application and the drainage information that has been submitted is supported by the technical consultees although those details are reserved by condition and highway safety highways are happy with the the layout of the site and highway safety terms each property benefits from minimum requirements for parking residential immunity as mentioned in terms of the future occupies of the development officers consider this to be very high end in terms of the amount of internal and external space that's provided to each unit and that's a big positive to the scheme particularly as the outline consent didn't secure residential space standards so a developer doesn't have to bring those forward but have done in this instance heritage assets again also satisfied that heritage is accept any impact on heritage acceptable the nearest listed building is is quite a distance away of water tower to the south and I think that is for me I expect there'll be some some questions so it's quite a long presentation we have questions or clarifications from firstly councillor breadman okay thank you councillor breadman please thank you chairman um first first of all sorry I do want to ask a matter of clarification but firstly I for mr senior and for the members of the committee I need to make a declaration and that is because I am probably the person in uh itemized uh by the parish councillors having a conflict a potential conflict of interest in the time also a county councillor and thus um the uh suggestion is I might be swayed by the needs of this land as well as being part of this committee uh and thus might be swayed by the needs to consider the council's five-year housing land supply and I'd just like to make it absolutely clear that as in all other situations um I am not uh swayed in any of those directions and I come to this matter completely afresh and I would also say that I take that accusation um with some uh offense that that should be suggested however that being said there are matters of clarification before we go on let's make sure that that is being properly noted and uh there's no legal issues that I need to pursue if I'm not hearing from my advisors that appears to be fine then councillor breadman thank you so if you'd like to launch your clarification please that was addressed under um by officers on paragraph 299 300 of the agenda so there are lots and lots of things to be discussed in this application but the first one I just wanted to clarify with the officer uh is the fundamental principle of what was approved at outline and what has now been submitted as reserved matters and uh in paragraph um 270 on page 70 um hang on that's not the one sorry it's page um sorry forgive me it's paragraph 303 on page 74 uh where it says that the illustrative master pan was not listed as an approved document as part of the outline consent and therefore carries no weight furthermore the footpath and cycleway connection referenced is outside the red line boundary for the development and its provision was not secured by condition all through the section 106 and yet chairman I wanted to clarify through you with the officers how come if that is the case how come um the matters that were inherent in the master plan were considered by the inspection officer at appeal in other words if the inspection officer at the planning inspector at appeal took the matters in the illustrative monster plan into account how is it that we are not allowed to okay thank you for that we'll get some clarification is the section thank you I'll share a copy of the illustrative master plan to help with these discussions um yeah so this is the master plan there's illustrative master plan that was submitted at outline stage and obviously it's quite common that an outline planning application you'll have an illustrative master plan to show that the site is capable of accommodating the level of development proposed um so this you'll see it says on the title it is an illustrative master plan it wasn't listed as an approved document as part of the appeal decision so it doesn't it doesn't carry forward in that respect um so the footpath and I expect will come on space I think when local members speak um is this footpath shown here connecting up to this end of the village development and obviously that would provide the potential for residents here to walk along the path through this means it acts as here alongside the primary school and into the village which is obviously preferable to having to walk through the development site and along ramps and road um members will note that part of that path is outside of the red line boundary um the requirement for that path was not secured by condition it was not secured within the section 106 agreement and as I said this isn't a listed listed as an approved plan so while the inspector could have looked at this um it hasn't been secured at outline stage the footpath hasn't been secured so we can't ask for it now at reserve matters stage as part of the planning application any footpath provision which the development the layout doesn't preclude the possibility of that coming forward because it's very open and permeable on on the boundaries here um but to say it wasn't an approved plan it's not listed as a condition and it's not within the 106 associated to the outbound application so we can't insist on that path as part of the reserve matters stage so chairman if I may just come back to clarify very quickly please thank you my concern thank you very much mr sexton my concern was partly that but also partly to do with the complete with the loss of the land area between the outline and the reserve matter because um I think I'm right in saying with a little bit of a back of a fag packet calculation uh that if you take out the area of les king wood uh and then take out and look at the um the density between the outline application and the reserve matter application effectively the density is doubled on the remaining area with this new application now surely the whole point of sorry I'm going to stop you there cancer bread and goes pays 38 uh item 53 and the density is explained entirely there even with these changes the density is only 24 um yeah just under the report yeah paragraphs um obviously 80 87 through 295 deal with density and it does look at obviously acknowledges that les king wood can't be counted as part of the developed area so there is a calculation for both the reserve matters area and the original outline area um and then the developer in their design that's a statement actually did a density calculation excluding les king wood excluding areas of open space just the developer area and it comes in sort of 22 to 24 dwelling so it is still below the requirements of local plan policy and neighborhood plan policy um even with the two hectares that has not been carried forward but that that's all set out in the report that sorry forgive me what I wanted to clarify was that the inspector approved the quantum of development based on the based on the density at the time so are we simply saying that that density was allowed through the outline but this greater density is still acceptable because it's within our um uh density calculations normally uh so yeah obviously reducing the red line area of reserve and stage makes it a bit more difficult to bring the same number of dwellings forward and obviously part of the response to that is we are looking at 147 properties rather than 154 but nonetheless the density is still falls well below the average requirements um obviously there is now exiting there is allowance within the policy to have a lower density that's responsive to character of the area so with this being an edge of village location obviously officers are happy that a lower density is suitable in this instance so it would accord with policy requirements notwithstanding the changes that have been made since since outline stage next we have Councillor Heather Williams right Councillor Williams please thank you chairman um just a couple of matters of clarification through yourself um the cycling so I can see we've got an objection from CAM cycle it's also been raised by Councillor Tim Wotherspoon um I'm just wondering if Mr Sexton could elaborate on on that um while Councillor Brandon raised about the counter council it's also raised about the five year land supply deficiencies and correcting impressions and things like that so we could just have some advice as as members that we can um to hopefully reassure public on that that we are in a position where we are looking at this as we have a five year land supply and therefore that won't be applying pressure to us um and the drainage concerns we seem to have a bit of a conflict between the um planning sorry the lead flooding authority and the old water drainage board so just some clarification around those thank you very much chairman so thank you Councillor Williams um so in terms of the comments that have been raised by CAM cycle and Councillor Wotherspoon the concerns that have been relay raised relate to matters of access and the visibility displays um those details were have already been approved and they were secured as part of the outline stage and the reserve matters layout follows those approved details I think the concern that's been raised particularly by Councillor Wotherspoon is that there has been some guidance that has come in since the granting of the outline permission um you know as as these things evolve over time but because you know they're already fixed um we can't alter those so the visibility displays have been provided for for vehicle access and cycle access have already been considered and considered to be acceptable um so I don't know the particular details but there's there is this new guidance note which would perhaps alter those if we were looking at an outline application today we might be looking at a slightly different arrangement but those details have already been secured so we can't address that as part of this application um in terms of 5-year land supply and I'm sure colleagues would chip in if necessary uh yes Councillor Minnan which has got a 5-year land supply this is a site that is counted towards 5-year land supply um obviously if members resolve to approve the application then that's the reserve matters ticked for 147 dwellings if matters if members resolve to refuse the application um the developer would obviously have the opportunity to appeal that decision um I think it's also important to note that because of COVID the some of the guidance around the lifetime of planning commissions does say that any deadline for the submission of applications for reserve matters which would have expired between 23rd of March 2020 and 31st of December 2020 is extended to May 2021 so had it not been for COVID this would have been the only reserve matters application the developer could make um but because of the government guidance around the impact of COVID um as well as appeal to my understanding is the applicant would have the opportunity to make a second reserve matters application if required if that's helpful on the 5-year land supply point um drainage I perhaps should have mentioned at the beginning I've invited Hilary Ellis from the Lead Local Flood Authority to attend today because I expected drainage would come up and members do enjoy asking me drainage questions so I have got some technical help this time um there yes so the RFA are satisfied the lower drainage rate and I'll try and explain this but perhaps Hilary can add to it um that was requested by the Drainage Board has been secured the Drainage Board have not have not responded to the Drainage Board have not responded to the latest round of consultation on the amended range information which would address the objection but I don't know if it's worth Hilary stepping in at this point to address the technicalities at that point I'm sure it's going to come up later Mr. Sexton so I think we're just deal with the clarifications but could you actually um just to be very clear about the five-year land supply if there were 147 houses did not go ahead we would still have a five-year land supply I understand that I I can't confirm that all I can confirm that is if members were minded to refuse the application the developer would have the opportunity to appeal and they'd also have the opportunity to submit another reserve matters application so the refusal of the reserve matters today wouldn't necessarily remove 147 dwellings from our supply at this point in time but okay any further than that I'm afraid all right I was just going back to Councillor Williams to check if answered the questions. Councillor Williams. Thank you Chairman and the answer's been very much appreciated and I'll see if there's anything else that comes across my mind later on. I'm sure you will thank you very much so Councillor Thane do we have another speaker? Councillor Nottingham next. Hello my question is about the access to the primary school which is a new on the original I know it's not binding the design master plan illicit master plan showed a larger row going right through and the primary potential primary school site being at the far end of the beyond the development towards the church direction and the new proposal shows a shorter area and access to a different is it suggested is it firmly suggested that if the primary school was built that it would be access directly by onto the land and joining the stub the show or is it likely that the new road will be built right across the playing fields to the far end have we got any indication or how that would do and you are in the report you imply that this is not something that one could take into account is there any degree to which can you confirm this can you illustrate more detail whether that is massive because that's one. Yes thank you councillor I'm just on an open document to illustrate the point but while I'm doing that so yeah the primary school test and I'm sure it will come on to this in the debate between the parish council and members have spoken there are potential plans to expand the primary school and as part of that new access would potentially stem from this site so this this let me share the layout plan operation on a slightly reduced number of screens today so I will be a bit slower jumping around then than normal hopefully members can now see the the layout plan for the site yes we can see them so yeah primary school is is here and the should an expansion come forward and should a new access come forward it's likely to be served by this uh road here um the exact route is not necessarily known but the illicited plan within design access statement and I believe on the outline plan do sort of show the potential for a road across the recreation ground which obviously brings about its own issues in terms of the usability of that space but and while I fully appreciate the parish council's point of view it is an area of land outside of the red line boundary for this application so the layout of this application simply facilitates for the potential access which may or may not come forward which is why I think it'd be very difficult for members to I don't think we could refuse this planning application on the basis of something that may or may not come forward outside of the red line boundary all this development does is facilitate that potential access and has designed the roads to an adoptable potentially an adoptable standard should that become necessary um but certainly yesterday plans that are within this information that come forward as the reserve matters now line stage to sort of show a potential link across the recreation ground but it's it's outside of the red line site and it's not a known element at this time of considering this application so it may work on forward but equally it it may not fine just to be clear there so it's not material to this application and we heard from Robert certainly don't believe we could refuse in that that basis I'm sure if if that's not correct I'm sure Stephen Reed would step in and say otherwise but I would be suggesting we're refusing at the moment thank you oh no I'm just okay okay I think we have councillor Roberts please thank you very much chairman um I don't want to labour the five-year land supply but I'm going to have to say something here and ask some questions because I'm not uh entirely happy in my own mind uh with the answer that's just being given to councillor Heather with Liam's question which was um have we definitely got a five-year land supply if we don't go ahead with this because uh at page 21 paragraph 17 we actually state furthermore the development of the site would result in the provision of 147 dwellings towards the council's five-year housing land supply now I am really concerned because it's not just this application today but it's also mentioned um on another one later into the uh into the meeting the same thing now we are here we are we have officers flagging up two members in there to remind us about the five-year land supply now um I think it's either time that we have that properly explained to us or it didn't appear on agendas in in the future um exactly what it then I'll quickly go down to page 26 which is the uh the parish council's comments and that first paragraph and I don't think it's accusing that accusing us of things I think it's just pointing out their concerns to get clarity of if there is conflict of interest and I have to say it does seem to me that some of the two uh hatted members on the committee today um may actually fall foul of given what we said at paragraph 17 about the five-year land supply and I need to know I think maybe from Mr Reed given what the parish council are saying as its concerns if we were to approve this today are we likely um to get this thrown back at us at the judicial review I mean you know um the rules about standing up and declaring interest pecuniary are not a pretty strong and straightforward I'd like it because I'm going to have to think about it later in the day as well okay let's get the answers a little bit um I missed the text I think you've already given your answer so I'm going to ask Mr Carter a few please thank you chairman yes I can confirm the council does have a five-year land supply uh this uh sites contributes towards the council's five-year land supply and as members will know the council has a requirement upon it to maintain a five-year land supply that's set out in in national planning policy framework guidance and policy so it's important that we consider the delivery of new homes in the context of this and any other planning application that that proposes to deliver new homes but I can confirm we do have a five-year land supply if this application were to be refused for any reason the council would maintain a five-year land supply but of course that's an evolving picture that takes into account a wide number of other sites across the district but we do have a five-year land supply this would contribute towards it so that is a the delivery of new homes is a material consideration for the committee as part of the discussion today sorry chairman hang on let me deal with this and if we could deal with the um the legal question of interest yes thank you chair um well I will ask Mr Reid to come in on that but certainly in my experience it's not unusual to have members who have twin hats so-called uh and that they are uh perfectly able to determine applications in these circumstances but perhaps you may like to hear from Mr Reid on that as well yes please could I just ask Mr Carter to clarify what he means by twin or or councillor Roberts when they say twin hats uh well we have councillors uh good good morning Mr Reid uh we have councillors who are councillors and I'm pointing out to Mr Reid at page um at page 26 that first top paragraph which is the comments and concerns of the of the parish council that they lay out there to them and I would say that there are also uh district councillors on this committee who are very much at the forefront of the five-year land supply and it's very important to um both particular district councillors um that um applications wherever um albeit within obviously a agreed policies and things get through and I'm just wondering you know why more people are actually a little bit more concerned about their positions all right thank you Mr Reid uh chair if I may um we've heard from councillor uh Bradnum you may wish to invite other members who are said to have twin hats to comment on uh whether they're coming to the matter afresh and looking at the application on its merits I don't think any there is any need for any additional legal comments right thank you very much so uh it's up to members to make decorations of interest if they feel that it is necessary um councillor Bradnum has already made her position clear okay thank you very much do we have further speakers please councillor Richard Williams would like to speak councillor Richard Williams please thank you very much chair um I know councillor Bradnum has already discussed this but I just want to go back to this point about the difference between the uh red line site at uh at outline stage and the site now and just get a bit bit of further clarification that we are actually still dealing with the same application because there is an argument to be made and the parish council makes the argument I think that this is a different application it has a different outline third parties would have commented on the initial application on the basis that the area I put forward for development was going to be developed now the landowner is proposing to hold back a portion of that site for a different use um and and I just want some clarification you know because my understanding is that once you get an outline applicant planning application the developer commits to developing the area that they were given permission for and that seems to have changed here so can I just get a bit of clarification that this does still actually fall within outline um it's the outline planning application it's not actually a new application okay thank you this is set some phase thank you chair um yes I mean reserve massive applications it's not uncommon I suppose that you could secure an outline planning commission and then you come forward in phases so you come forward for phase one which would have a smaller red line boundary than the original outline and then you come forward with phase two now obviously this isn't a phased approach but that's just an example of how the red line boundary reserve matter stage can be smaller than that secured outline stage as long as that red line boundary is entirely within what was you know approved the outline stage um then the reserve mass application is in accordance with the principle of the developments being established it's if you're reducing the size and still trying to bring forward the same number of dwellings it makes it more difficult in terms of you know complying with design and density policies but certainly there's no conflict with the outline permission in terms of bringing forward this slightly reduced red line boundary and in some respects the developer has had to respond to that by reducing um the number of dwellings that has been put forward to members today I appreciate it's not reduced the extent the parish council feel is appropriate but as set out on report the density remains acceptable um so there's no there's no conflict with what was established outline because then we are still looking at the same site the same development it's still residential development so um there's no conflict there all right thank you very much I think Mr. Carpenter wanted to speak did you uh no not for me thank you Jim no you have councillor Braden and want to speak again and I'm also down to speak myself all right okay do you want to speak first and uh councillor Fein and then I'll go to councillor Braden thank you chairman I'll I'll come in next then um I think Mr. Sexton's been very clear about the relationship with the neighborhood plan about the weight we should give that um but my concerns my understanding was that only in relation to one aspect of the neighborhood plan is their significant conflict this is in relation to vista 2 and I would appreciate guidance on two points there the first is as was pointed out when the outline consent was granted in May 2018 at appeal the neighborhood plan did not then have the same status so what weight do we put on it in relation to that um and the second thing is we were shown a photograph of this vista which appeared to show the church tower only I think in the distance I just wondered to what extent that aspect of the whether the church tower is likely to be still visible over the houses at the uh slightly higher height of up to 10 meters ridge height whether any evidence has been presented on that point thank you Mr. Sexton please thank you chair so yes as set out in appendix three I believe it is it attempts to show appendix four sorry it does show the development of the neighborhood plan alongside the sort of timelines of the outline consent and clearly there is an argument that could be made that the outline consent was established before the vista was shown on ramps and road um in conversations with parish uh they sort of said to me well it's all that map is always being illustrative of as to where the vista actually is clearly the intent is a vista towards the church which when you go to site you actually get a better view of the site to the as you travel further towards ramps and along ramps and road from the other side of the flasco towards this application site nonetheless the vista the you know the referendum version of the neighborhood plan has it's got to referendum stage with the vista shown where it is in the plan so we have to acknowledge that the layout of the site would conflict with the policy as it has moved forward rightly or wrongly so that is acknowledged in the report there is a condition recommended that so we we could look to explore some sort of landscape um feature along the edge of Leskingwood to try and celebrate that view towards the church um I think it's obviously that by by putting residential properties onto this site you are going to be obscuring the views that are currently available from ramps and road to the church tower as you saw in the photo at that time of year it's quite a limited view anyway so you may still get some glimpsing views from ramps road but I think I think most of them would be lost but there would obviously be views from within the site towards the church um but certainly I think the ones along ramps and road that are current there would obviously be obscured by the residential development which has been established on the site so there is a conflict and we have to acknowledge that conflict and weigh that in the planning balance which is why we're here today is that helpful thank you very much um Councillor Bradman you want to pursue another point thank you chairman I just wanted to clarify this as far as I'm aware I'm the only twin-hatted member that is both district council and county council member on the planning committee today um but the other thing I wanted sorry I meant to come back on hedgerows and I wondered if um the case officer Mr Sexton could just clarify um in the application there's um information about um sort of it's acknowledged sort of regrettable loss of hedgerow which I think mainly refers to that it's refers to loss of 250 meters of hedgerow along ramps and road but I just wanted to check my understanding is of the red line on the reserved matters application it looks to me as if the um dog leg hedgerow that goes across the centre of the site much of that is also going to be lost which can you confirm that Mr Sexton because there's also reference to hedgerow being planted but actually all of that roughly speaking eastern boundary of the development part of it would have been against the existing rather good hedgerow and I just wanted to clarify is it your understanding much of that will be taken out which would be all right thank you Mr Sexton please so yeah the reference to 247 meters of hedgerow that is lost uh that includes hedgerow that's required visibility space and I believe it does also include some of the existing hedgerows within the red line boundary to accommodate the development obviously the the biodiversity information that's come forward does highlight that although obviously a loss of any hedgerow is regrettable there will be a net gain planted throughout the site so while 247 will be lost in and around the site 300 meters um in excess of 300 meters comprising mixed species we will be going in as part of the landscape strategy um that's only sort of highlighted as a master plan at this point because the reserve the actual full details of landscaping are reserved by condition um but the reports that have been submitted obviously do indicate that we will be seeing more hedgerow planted than is lost obviously acknowledging what is you know what is lost is obviously regrettable thank you okay thank you very much uh I think that's all our speakers are on clarification so I'm going to move on to public speakers now is uh Mr Michael Brown with us please yes I am can you hear me can indeed good morning Mr Brown good morning uh good morning Mr Chairman good morning councillors good and you know the system do you you've got three minutes yep I'll do my best let you know when the time's up okay okay when you're ready good morning everybody um my name is Michael Brown and my wife and I live at 120 Rabbitton Road one of the short line of houses to the south of the site that will back onto this development we along with our neighbours have objected to the houses proposed to build immediately behind us on grounds of their proximity their height and the steeply pitched roofs when built we believe these houses will be two three meters higher than the established houses rendering them overbearing and overshadowing although they are located at the minimum allowable separation distance we fear we still will suffer lots of privacy and lots of light to our living spaces design perspective the Kotlin Village design statement um and this is guideline b6 requests that and I quote new developments should refer to local building forms and proportions and should reflect those that are adjacent the differences in form and proportion due to the steeply pitched roofs and the height uh here are significant and are accentuated by the close proximity so we are pleased to see that the office's report in section seven does acknowledge that these houses will cause harm but we cannot agree that this is minor further we find that the officer's assertion that the application should be approved because unbalance the merits of the development outweigh the harm to be unsatisfactory this approach almost by definition will always deliver a suboptimal outcome unless ways are sought to remediate or mitigate the harm that will be caused and we believe that such mitigation is possible here by relocation or removal of these houses the parish council is also arguing for this for them it would enable them to realize an objective of a neighborhood plan that the field between us and the recreation ground be used in its entirety for sports facilities in particular for an all-weather multi-use games area which cannot be accommodated within the current design provision of this would deliver a very positive outcome for the entire village in the outline application appeal report section 35 the inspector also recognized that harm could be caused by these houses and stated that since there was space available that they should be located elsewhere but the applicant has ignored the inspector's recommendation and has instead reduced the red line area by two hectares and without a corresponding reduction in number of houses so we would ask the committee to consider carefully how the harms identified which affects the entire community can be mitigated to deliver an optimal solution it seems evidence that within the red line area proved to outline a layout could be achieved that would would better meet objectives of all parties thank you very much thank you Mr Brown members do you have any questions of clarification for Mr Brown I'm looking in the chats nope so thank you very much Mr Brown sorry I'm struggling to get to this could I may I speak first we have councillor to me Hawkins and then councillor Bradnam okay councillor Hawkins quick thank you Mr Brown for for the points you have brought forward just to clarify what in your estimation is the difference between the reach height of your property and the ones that are supposed to be behind in the new development okay so the new development those particular houses are from a building type they are they are 9.3 meters high our house is 8.3 meters high but the our house is the highest in the row of houses so I think the other houses may be a meter below that so smaller houses and I also understand that when built houses are often higher than as designed because of brown from the the footings and so on being spread around so they are built higher than as designed so that that leads me to the two to three meter height difference so they as designed they could be two meters higher than the some of that lower houses in this in this nine pound another meter when it comes in but being built okay thank you for that all right thank you I think I've got councillor Bradnam please I withdraw that was the question I was going to ask thank you okay right thank you I can let you go with this time okay thank you very much everybody thank you for your contribution um is Mr David Alpin with us yeah Mr Chairman I'm here thank you you like to turn on okay so you know the system do that you know there's three minutes and then big questions so when you're ready yes okay thanks thanks very much thank you Mr Chairman for the opportunity to speak to you all today in support of this application my name is David Applin and I'm the senior development manager with this land responsible for the delivery of the project for those who may not be aware this land was established by Cambridge County Council for the purpose of providing much needed quality housing all revenue that we generate goes back to help pay for the delivery of frontline services such as education health social care within the community we are a developer that can make a difference our core values are about delivering quality design based around sustainability ecology and with community at the forefront in all that we do working within the existing outline consent throughout the design processes we have collaborated extensively with statutory consultees and key stakeholders and in particular the local community to help ensure this application is wholly compliant and will serve as a positive contribution to the cotton community achieving a detailed master plan that suits all parties both in architecture and layout has been challenging however the requirement and desire by all those involved to service residents needs housing needs ecology and the future sporting and recreation needs of the community has remained pivotal throughout our policy planning process through extensive consultation with the parish council and officers of South Cambridgeshire district councils built a natural environment team we have listened we have designed we have redesigned and together we feel we have produced a scheme that balances and places the built environment and the needs of the local community both today and tomorrow at the very heart of our proposal in achieving that balance we have reduced the total number of dwellings by seven to 147 and all homes are 10 year blind the scheme will deliver 40 percent affordable housing and over 50 percent of the total number of homes are either one or two bed which will greatly assist local first-time buyers the protection of less kingwood has formed a vital component in our design the wood will be enhanced by a long-term woodland management plan it will also benefit from new access points for the increased enjoyment of the local community our proposal both in landscape and ecology will deliver a biodiversity net gain with species rich habitats being created across the site in addition to the 1.6 million pound contra contribution to the local infrastructure by way of the section 106 agreement we will also be extending the existing cycle and footpath network through the development which will help reduce local car journeys and encourage active travel crucially and not part of the section 106 agreement our design allows for a future access point to service copman primary school and enables the school to continue to grow and to flourish this application helps safeguard the school expansion so that access is both safe and sustainable for the whole community sustainability is vital to achieving a greener future and combat the climate emergency we'll face and as a company we are proud that we are years ahead of the government's initiative to reduce the use of fossil fuels by designing an air source heat pumps as a means of heating i hope this resume has been helpful and that you agree with your office's recommendation and vote to deliver this scheme as part of cottonham's local plan to provide well-designed sustainable housing for the greener future the community deserves thank you all right thank you very much members do we have questions gentlemen we have the council of ripeth first council ripeth please hello good morning um you said about the sustainability and the biodiversity of the development so i have a couple of questions for clarification um with hedgerows your aiming to put in i think it was 300 meters of hedgerows could you explain whereabouts they will be and how that will help with bees and insects able to get around the site um with no so that obviously a main issue with biodiversity okay the the question that you've asked is actually quite detailed and quite specific i don't have the ability to share my screen but there is a very detailed comprehensive chapter within the design and access statement and the relevant chapters that is supported by that and i would suggest that you just refer to that or indeed to michael sexton and he'll be able to point that out in in the detail that i think that your question requires okay um the other one was about cycling and getting around the site um i'm a little bit sort of concerned about the footpath which has been kind of it seems to be removed on the reserve matters application i mean how far would it how long would it take to walk to the centre of the village um under the new sort of plans right okay so that footpath has as the planning officer said that was shown um on the outline consent was an indicative footpath and does not form art um of a material consideration however we are all about sustainability and we are all about reducing car journeys um and we've worked extensively with the parish council and indeed the the district council in providing footpath routes that on a plan that actually hasn't been shown here today that you will have in your documentation and the whole development is is is porous um so as well as providing the cycle passes as we rightly have to in the section 106 agreement there are also additional footpaths across land which don't forget isn't owned by us it's all by the parish council but we've worked extensively with them to agree routes um that basically do not um if you like jeopardize any future sporting pitch or sporting surface um extension in the future um so there's we there's there is a number of footpaths that that we have proposed but we can only propose them because we can only take the footpath to our boundary after that it's it's for the parish council or indeed a neighbouring landowner to decide whether that footpath can go off into Kotlin for example okay would it be okay for Michael Sexton to show us any either that will both of these plans i'm i'm very happy for them to be shared absolutely there's there's there's well i'd like to move on if that's all right okay we can return to this when we get to the debate thank you then councillor ritchard williams thank you with councillor hawkins actually before me i'm ready to give the advice of the vice chair so what's councillor bradnam before me councillor feina is the one who is uh dealing with the list councillor ritchard williams yep i'm sorry but you it's all right already it doesn't matter does it we'll get you in a moment don't worry so councillor williams please thank thank you chair um this is really actually it's a comment arising from from what mr applin has said and it's no criticism of mr applin at all but i think it would be useful to reassure members of the public if we could just have a bit of some clarification from mr reed or mr carter that the purposes for which the funds raised from this development would be used e.g fund public services is not a material consideration for this committee uh that is quite clear i think um yeah sorry i'm just trying to get things on yes we take all that on board mr carter you wanted to confirm that then did you yeah sorry just just through you yes i confirm that that interpretation from councillor williams is is correct thank you very much do we have councillor annett bradnam which i think he's on this one not the last one is it that's correct thank you if through you chairman thank you very much um i wanted to ask mr applin whether he would accept that an established hedge has greater diversity than a newly planted hedge and i wondered whether he would be amenable uh and i'm thinking about hedges both along rampton road and with on the eastern boundary of the houses i wondered whether he would be amenable to a condition that required him to maintain existing hedges wherever possible even if that meant cutting them quite short because he could still then maintain the um his aspiration for open openness i wondered whether he would be prepared to accept that um it's it's not something i too could agree to at the moment but in in principle um there is absolutely no reason why and and we and we haven't done this anyway that we're not just going to remove hedges for removing hedgerow's sake um any hedgerow that we've had to remove has basically been to enable development maybe because of safety reasons because of highways and visibility displays um but has already been gone into we we are planting in excess of the number of hedgerows that we're actually removing to your to your first point again the detail you require i'm not qualified to tell you about the species rich varieties that are going to be planted um but again it will all be in that report and i think it's already been actually conditioned anyway so you'd be able to see clarification on that all right thank you very much then we have councillor to me Hawkins councillor Hawkins please uh thank you chair um obviously through you to mr afling um thank you for all that you have explained i think what i want to clarify from you so i mean you say you've worked hard with um parish council that you've listened um however there seems to be this design feature in the houses which is of very steep um steep roofs um and i just wanted to find out from you if that is a feature that runs through the village or is it a is it a because you've you've selected that as a feature for your for your side but from what i've seen of cotton that is not a typical um feature so how come you've settled on that one please okay um we we've got 10 house types on this on this on this development um and as you know we've we've attended a number of design reviews panels with the with um South Cambridge District Council's built environment team so we have worked hand in glove with basically agreeing the materials um and the and the visual appearance of these buildings um and we have been working it's about two years now and again we've obviously taken in the design guide for Kotlin and some roofs you're right if you actually walk around the village you will see varying pictures of roofs um these are modern houses obviously built with modern but traditional materials and so the the actual pitch of the roof as the planning officer explained is not untypical of some of the houses and some of the dwellings that you're actually going to find within Kotlin and all the surrounding area uh may i come back chair i don't think you've answered my question how typical are steep roofs they're not very typical are they it's just a small percentage of Kotlin that has steep roofs i would i would i would respectively disagree okay then have councillor robert thank you very much councillor robert's please thank you oh gosh thank you chairman my camera's not working yet thank you very much chairman and through you chairman i'm sure that um we've really heard that a complimentary uh flowing appreciation from an applicant for their own application is this one and i wonder given um the uh the words that were spoken and the claims that were made i'm sure that um the county council's representative must be very disappointed at listening to what the neighbours say and the uh very detailed explanations of the parish council's feelings i wonder if you could also tell me um given the fact that you have got two hectares less less of land that you are using why you have only chosen to take out seven dwellings from a two-hectare area one of the great concerns of neighbours that mr brown said at the start was the uh nearness to um those that are already around and i would have thought that if you are as listening as you are saying that you are you would have taken that on board and actually taken some of that problem away by not having dwellings uh so many dwellings on this site and therefore giving some relief to people already in place why have you not done that uh council robert's thank you for your question um there are a number of questions within that uh overarching question um we we don't act the the two hectares that were removed we don't actually own so as the planning officer tried to explain um this isn't a phase development we have we are delivering in a single phase we don't actually own those two hectares that were removed but we had to achieve the same amount of housing within a much smaller area now why it looks very it looks very simple on plan but you've but you've got a number of parties all of which conflict with each other so the parish council rightly and i would do the same want the maximum amount of land which is actually our land um that they would like for future expansion of recreational purposes that is admirable and we've worked with them but at the same time you have um the les kingwood which is a which is a key cotton and assets and we don't want to encroach into the wood so we've pulled away from the wood and we've also pulled away so we've given all we're proposing to um allow the parish council as much land as possible we've worked with the parish council on a number of pitch configurations and i appreciate that we don't have time today but actually there is plenty of room within what is left to actually install a mugger and a number of five aside football pitches there is there is actually space there but at the same time we still have to provide an access for future potential expansion of the primary school as well as 15 a number of houses and yes that has been we've lost seven houses the back to back distance with the objection that was voiced earlier actually are we we we have exceeded back to back distances and again we have lost seven units which we're quite happy to lose seven units because we're about quality we're not about cramming houses into a small area that's that's not what we about that's not sustainable and it doesn't look like an environment for the residents of of cottonham okay thank you very much yeah we have no other speakers but michael sexton was offered to clarify a point here i'm not sure that that'd be very helpful at the moment i think we we know what we know so thank you very much indeed miss alpin thank you mr chairman thank you and we move on then to the parish council representative which is councillor morris councillor morris are you with us can you hear me now yep i'm going to hear you can't see you yet though oh that could be a blessing um it's supposed to be on but i'll i'll carry on in the it may okay sorry i'm sure you know you know the system then sure indeed i do he is whenever you're ready thank you um first could i uh give a sincere apology to councillor bradman it was certainly not intended to give personal offense to her in her position uh it was perhaps a slightly heavy-handed approach to bring to the committee's visibility that there are multiple county council issues that have a bearing on this so i'm sorry certainly um yeah good morning still um and thank you for this opportunity um if i can start by saying that the parish council contends that insufficient weight is being given to certain policies in our neighborhood plan uh which as you know we've been working on for five years only to be a little thwarted earlier in the year by covid but lots of other plans have gone awry in that time the cotton neighborhood plan was recommended by the examiner and the district council to go to referendum but that was suspended by your ceo in march based on fears about safety with covid but subsequently the government has asserted that such plans should be given significant weight this interpretation we believe could and should lead to the planning authority treating the neighborhood plan as part of the local plan in key areas including site design and except in the parish council interpretation of the policies it actually wrote itself um the parish council's comments are more consistent with the findings of the appeal inspector and our neighborhood plan examiner independent plan examiner of course the developer rather than amending any significant design detail has focused on numbers number of houses despite buying a smaller site and then arguing why in their opinion they consider the application is consistent with the neighborhood plan and even questioning the plan's weight relative to the district design guide which was not mentioned at all by the appeal inspector um the authority appears to be defending rather than testing the developer's approach that's perhaps an exception of the committee from what i've heard this morning including the worrying attempted rebuttal of the persimmon 8 as i call it surface water planning condition which is applied with your council's help to both the persimmon and red row reserve masses applications specifically to meet our policy coh 22 e f and g on surface water drainage but as a reminder the government says neighborhood planning gives communities direct power to develop a shared vision for their neighborhood and shape the development of growth of the local area they're able to choose where they want new homes shops and offices to be built have their say on what those new buildings should look like and what infrastructure should be provided enough um okay i'll move on from that at examination in 2019 the examiner the independent examiner in his report said this neighborhood plan includes a range of policies and seeks to bring forward positive and sustainable development in the neighborhood planning neighborhood area it seeks to refine the local green spaces in the village it also identifies potential development sites within the village itself in the round the plan has successfully identified a range of issues where it can add value to the strategic context already provided by the wider development plan we believe the officer report takes a view that is too close to that of the developer gives insufficient weight to the examined MP policies cited from the continent plan and the application should be refused unless and until progress is made on the issues raised allowing you to encourage rather than discourage the development of further neighborhood plans and we did in our last submission identify mitigations that are possible in all the areas where we have objections but unlike what mr. Applin was recently saying the this land proposition has not changed they have not listened um whether on whatever aspect it is thank you all right thank you very much i think we have some speakers do we council chairman yes we have first councillor bradham councillor bradham please thank you chairman um good morning uh frank nice to see you and you can i say thank you very much i accept your apology i suspected it was not intended directly at me and i also i'm very aware of the amount of work and time you have put into developing your village design statement and your neighborhood plan so i appreciate how close it is to your heart i particularly wanted to ask you that i know you have been trying to what is the word assemble land such that you can have the maximum area for open play and recreation and sports pitches and such like and i wanted to if you could perhaps talk us through what impact you think this application might have on your potential wishes for how you wanted to use that land for recreation space yes and i'll try and be brief there are complications because of the county council's other aspirations on the land it's likely that land in the north of the overall site will be taken away because of the primary school expansion some of that land is unusable because of um surface water one of the issues that we raised with this land on their own development which i'm sure they don't yet appreciate the false sense sense of um but ideally there's a piece of land that the county would not sell to this land and we think they're holding it back because to use effectively as a ransom against some of the land that they'll take away for the primary school but there's no guarantee we will get that land so at the moment we could be constrained to what we call our first and second field and the third field that we leased at some expense from the county council 20 years ago i think we will lose a lot of that land and the pitches that were on it and the land that this land is possibly offering and it's still not clear exactly how much land and on what terms is not enough to replace that and it means in practice that um we probably would have to do some sort of all-weather upgrade on that area to substitute for some land that we will lose elsewhere and that would be a costly venture i think we'll get the picture there just one more one more if i make the possibility of fitting a full-scale football pitch with the three or four meter respect lines that the FA require is limiting how we could use that land that this land is offering currently so those extra houses being removed is very important all right thank you very much next we have councillor rippith right councillor rippith please good morning just so bearing in mind everything you said and thank you for the detail in your report in our gender papers if the number of houses were reduced to the pro-rata amount taking out the hectares on the two hectares i believe it is reduced from the outline to say 120 or so houses would many of your concerns be addressed by that would there be space for you know the pitches the footpaths the hedgerows the things that you hoped to be part of your neighborhood the short answer is yes it basically there is scope and in one sense it's annoying to hear David Applin suggest some of the things along lesking wood we did liberally reduce the size of lesking wood as far as local green space was concerned to allow him more flexibility on where the houses were going to go along that line the way they've chosen to put them blocks the vista as we've heard which is wrong if a neighborhood plan is going to be respected at all that vista has to be retained and that would take out about a number of the houses there's a few along the front of the i think they call it their green or something which should also go and there's the five that mr brown referred to should go and if those went as you say bringing it out about 120 there is a workable design okay thank you that's really helpful thank you very much we have council Hawkins council Hawkins please thank you good morning thank you for your comprehensive response to this so one of the things I want to explore with you is the the the appearance and the proportion of the buildings and especially those that are towards the south now I did I did try to run to get from Mr Applin his you know his view on why the the buildings seem to be so tall I mean in my estimation two three story buildings should be what no more than perhaps eight meters 8.5 and yet we have stuff that is going up to 10 meters yes there is no sensitivity at all as mr Brown said and in fact I pointed out to him the when the groundwork is finished as we found on the bellway site the finished level of the land that people start building up from is probably a good two meters higher than it was when they started and so putting houses close even within the rules to the rows of houses on rumpson road already the second row effectively is insensitive at best and they should be pulled back but on the other hand that eats into land that the parish council want for sport of course um the steep roofs make no sense at all um in Cottenham and one of the things that we've been careful not to do is that I think this land have spoken far more to the district design guide across at Cambridge where I don't I'm not an expert on it but there probably are more steeper roof houses steeper pitched houses in Cottenham as you say there are very few and one of the tragedies that we have at the moment is planning that focuses more on the broader district and tends to homogenize rather than picking up the character of individual villages and that's what neighborhood plans are supposed to do as village design guides are supposed to do is now a tragedy if we lost that uh well you understand that I do I do thank you for that clarification I did things because I have spent time in Cottenham in the past I have worth there you know I know what it's like so I was quite surprised um by the comments I received previously so thank you for that clarification um as also just towards the less king words it seemed to me that the houses have been pushed quite close to that what's your what's your response to that yes they have um and I say in the past and I don't think we've had any meaningful conversation with this land for well over a year despite all sorts of assurances when the noble plan was when the referendum was suspended the we tried to open up as I say by pulling the um designation of the local green space back to the pathways within the wood to allow more leeway and gap between the houses and the wood itself in practice that area is still overdeveloped they've put a strip of houses pretty much along almost right along the vista almost deliberately along the vista it would seem but I'm sure it wasn't deliberate it's just insensitive thank you thank you next we have councillor Roberts unless you want to invite take up Michael Sexton's offer to clarify on Les King Wood no I'd like to complete the um members comments questions first please councillor Roberts please um thank you chairman just uh I was actually going to make the two points with my um particular concern with the numbers and the heights and those questions have been very well put by my colleagues councillor Griffith and councillor Hawkins and thank you councillor Morris Ramstone thank you chairman excellent thank you very much so we have no other speakers listed okay uh councillor um Mr Sexton did you want to come back in well before we do that our release councillor Morris thank you very much for your contribution this morning thank you so Mr Sexton did you want to expand on the Kingswood issue yeah if it's appropriate at this point I can wait till the debate I've put together a plan that overlays the two hectares has been lost with the outline application which I think will help members we'll come back to that then because I've still got two more speakers and I'd like to complete those please so uh local councillors I believe wish to speak is councillor Gough with us please I am um thank you chair and before I start can I just make a declaration because I will reference the Old West River IDB in my comments and I am along with councillor Wilson board members of the IDB um but of course their role in this application is completely independent of our role as board members that's noted just before you start Mr Gough could members and visitors please turn off their cameras and their microphones thank you okay thank you um the setting of this development is important it's adjacency to the intensively used recreation ground and very important very important is now joining very important local green space of lesbian wood a much loved tranquil area I want to highlight three points the outline application was for 154 dwellings the developed area has been reduced but the number of houses or dwellings has not been reduced commensurately pro rata a poor precedent but note in particular the layout of the area to the northeast of ramp till farm that is now being developed that will compromise future potential expansion of recreation space hasn't visited the neighborhood plan and explained by councillor Morris once lost it will never be possible to recover that flexibility secondly given the adjacencies boundaries on this site were important of particular significance and this has been mentioned by councillor Bradman and council ripper is the linear mature hedge probably about 500 meters that runs along the whole eastern and north lee boundary away from rampton road this is noted and considered in the biodiversity report to be a habit of principle importance however on the inspection of the layout of the design it looks like it's incompatible with the retention of this hedge road the officers report and pay appara 126 says the eastern boundary of the site will remain relatively open and allow access onto the adjacent recreation open areas that implies that the hedgerow would be removed but the aforementioned biodiversity report assumes in para 3.3.2 that that hedgerow will be retained that is completely inconsistent and it suggests to me that the conclusion of the local net gain from the biodiversity report which has been mentioned on a couple of occasions so far is flawed as reference in para 220 that inconsistency cannot be allowed to pass unresolved thirdly drainage drainage is important in cotton to those of you who visited the site will have noticed the waterlogged ground on the site and the considerable slope locally it is referred to as a hill i'm worried that the idb has not opined on the scheme i'm also concerned that the parish council remains concerned this is really important because if the retention facilities proved to be insufficient it could really compromise the utility of the local green space that would be a real loss and i hope members of the committee will discuss and review the drainage issues thank you very much chairman i don't have any questions listed at this stage okay well thank you thank you very much for your contribution chairman i now have councillor bradden and wanting to ask a question yeah of course councillor bradden is of course chairman thank you um thank you councillor gough um i wondered uh in your consideration of the drainage arrangements and the sud pond can you just explain to me is your fear that the sud if the sud pond is inadequate that that will actually end result in flooding of lez king wood or is it your impression that it will overflow into the idb catch catch drain well i think the plan is that the idb drain is the actual outlet for for the the drainage system there's two issues i think with the retention one of which is the scale of the retention i hope i hope it is right um the scale is appropriate for for the requirements of the drainage system but secondly the other points and and the parishes uh pointed this out to as well the the actual land in lez king wood is very very um claggy uh it's silty so it often gets waterlogged it has actually had standing water on it um in the past uh when it rains heavily and obviously if that um if that area does not drain uh effectively it reduces the utility of the use of that local green space thank you councillor nick right next all right thank you councillor right please thank you chairman and my question to councillor gough is this that um i note from my emails that you and councillor wilson arranged uh visits to the site or members of the planning committee could i ask whether the chairman was present in all those visits well um i i can answer that uh no he wasn't i made an independent visit to the site myself um this is an official visit in that as things stand with the you know the present pandemic that we are not making official visits so these were visits requested by the local member and it was up to members of the committee in light of your response probably my next question will be to steven read it uh when i come to make comments so thank you very much okay so uh do we have any other there's no other questions i think to councillor gough so thank you very much councillor gough for your contribution and councillor williams wilson thank you chair i hope you can hear me um they went ready you know there's three minutes okay thanks like as we've heard cotton them has both a village design statement and a neighborhood plan which is currently subject to referendum both have been drawn up with the participation of residents and are intended to give local people the opportunity to have input into how their community develops the neighborhood plan which incorporates elements of the village design statement which due to go to referendum as we've heard but because of covid it didn't but government regulations um require that they the um neighborhood plan is given significant weight in decision making so far as the plan is material to the application a steep pitched roof is an exception in cotton them rather than the norm and the design here creates a conflict with the village design statement the impact is all the more significant for the existing properties in the vicinity the proximity and height of the new houses is highly likely to create overshadowing we've already seen this happen on the bellway development in cotton them the groundworks raised the level of the houses causing overlooking that could not be remedied by six foot high fencing the officer acknowledges the visual harm created by the additional height however page 39 of the agenda refers to a 21st century design to explain the departure from the neighborhood plan given that the neighborhood plan has been drawn up and approved by the examiner in the 21st century and that it is specific to cotton them why accept this departure from that document rather than seek to give it the significant weight that is required by government regulation especially if it is acknowledged that the height of the roofs creates a visual harm the visual the finished design statement and the neighborhood plan both seek to encourage walking and cycling and the reduction in car use this development is remote from the core of the village the new residents will have a roundabout walk via rampton road and lambs lane to reach the nursery the primary school and the core of the village to use local shops and facilities pedestrians will need to navigate a narrow pavement on the busy roads on which the local speed watch team regularly flags up speeding traffic this is equally intimidating for cyclists the outline plans submitted to the inspector highlighted the prospect of off road paths to the village core their absence in this application for forcing residents to walk and cycle along a very busy road is highly likely to result in car dependency this plan makes no attempt therefore to ameliorate car dependency the remoteness the lack of more direct off-road walking and cycling to the village core as well as the design of the houses that is an odd with the village design statement will do nothing to help the new residents feel part of the existing community in cotton them thank you all right thank you very much um councillor right your camera is still on i don't know if you know you did apologies right uh councillor fein we have speakers councillor fein are you with us i don't know if we've lost councillor fein have we councillor fein is muted we have councillors hawkins and councillor bradden and plus myself listed to speak german right okay so i think you're first on the list aren't you councillor fein so if you like to go ahead again yes my question relates to the design and the roof pitches um i noted that at paragraph 53 the urban design officers were supported of changes introduced to the scheme and considered that these accorded with the design objectives so sit out in the cotton and village design statement and the neighborhood plan um it was further suggested at one point earlier this morning that the roof pitches and therefore the height of the ridges was in part a response to the village design statement it may have been a response to the neighborhood plan that wasn't clear to me at the time i wondered if councillor wilson could comment on that um i this has always been discussed earlier with um councillor hawkins the generality of roof pitches is now exiting is lower um high pitched roofs are not the norm in cotton and given that um especially in the case of the the houses that are going to be backing onto the houses in mountain mode um it's not necessary and as um councillor morris said it's insensitive to say the least um high pitched roofs are not the generality of the shape of roofs in cotton them all right thank you then we have councillor hawkins i think has the Hawkins please uh thank you jeff um i think my my question to you really is on the uh on access to the village centre i mean i know uh mr harplin said there's a map somewhere that shows some paths that we put together i mean did any were you aware of any of this happening i mean what was there i presume you discuss with them you know access from there into the centre into the school um but it seems the maps that we have done actually show um you know how people from that development are going to be getting to the village um i i think in particular if we look at the people in the northeast who will be living in the northeast corner of the site they will have a very long walk um or cycle there are cycle there will be cycle paths provided for in the development but they will have a very long walk to get to access the school where there could be a more direct pathway that goes um straight oh sorry so i was just ringing the my doorbell um well timed um yes um they will have to walk along rampton road and lambs lane and i think human nature is such that people will just get into their cars there is already a problem with people driving their school and causing obviously risky and dangerous and to have even more people doing that at the same time is just um just horrendous so there should be some way for these people to be able to access the village core and it's about accessing village amenities village um pub shops at the human nature is going to dictate that they will get into their cars and this does nothing to prevent that happening thank you councillor bradnam and councillor bradnam please thank you councillor the Hawkins hasn't again asked the question i was going to ask sorry that's fine then so it was to do with how long it would take to get from um those houses in the north corner to into the village centre i understand that my colleague councillor now i'm going to interrupt now i'm sorry we have to have to actually address the actual application before the the principle of the development is was decided at the outline stage so that is not within our power to to review that again okay so i think we've done the speakers there so councillor wilson thank you very much for your contribution thank you so members um just before we go on i think mr sexton would just like to clarify some elements about king ward mr sexton please yeah thank you chair i just wanted to be helpful before starting the debate just to i'll just put together a plan that shows the two hectares have been moved um in terms of the density i don't know if that would be helpful to members um can i just share my screen this is i've literally just super imposed so this is the outline master plan showing what indict illustratively uh may have come forward and the inspector would have had before him when considering density okay the area that i've drawn is now joining the area that i've marked in blue just for context shows the two hectares that has been removed from the development site a reserve matter stage so when looking at the argument of what the inspector considered density wise to what we're considering density wise now members should note that the area removed although again illustratively only only affects 20 dwellings a lot of the area that's no longer part of the application was never shown indictively to be um residential development so how the how the density would have been considered by the inspector on the basis of this plan is very similar to how the density is being considered within this reserve matters application because the two hectares removed was not shown illustratively to be two hectares of housing um i just thought that might help clarify on that point and regarding lez king wood and i do acknowledge that the parish council haven't drawn the local green space boundary right up to the edge of the wood um an original layout of the plan did have houses much closer to lez king wood than currently proposed as before members now that was strongly objected to by the local authority in particular the council's trees officer because once you start to encroach into the woodland it starts to lose the fact that it's a woodland and it starts to become more of a glorified row of trees um so just i think that's important to know that there was an initial objection from the trees officer because development did encroach into lez king wood and that has been pulled away now um i just thought those two points might be helpful moving forward to chair thank you very much indeed i think councillor right you wanted to raise a point thank you chairman and having listened to both local members who are clearly objecting to the application in the interests of fairness to everyone um i'm surprised that they have been giving tours of the site and no member of the planning committee who's been on those tours has declared it as an interest um i can't ever remember where local members have done this in advance and i don't accept your explanation that it's a covid practice because at the last planning last planning meeting we all well great many of us went out to william where the planning officer gave us a tour of the sites and i would just like to uh hear steven read that you know we are able to proceed with this bearing in light what i've said all right thank you very much yeah let's take advice sir uh mr read uh okay if i may um i think that's a matter for the planning officers rather than the legal officer to deal with okay mr carter then please thank you chair yes thank you councillor right um i gave advice uh to members that we wouldn't be able to accommodate a site visit in the traditional way minibus for example um due to the current restrictions in place due to coronavirus what i did say was that if members wanted to visit the site from public vantage points such as the road or the footpath public footpath then that was a matter for members to determine what whether or not they chose to do that um whether members were then given an explanation or views of the site by the local members is a matter for individual members to consider when it comes to making a decision on the application provided that members come with an open mind to this meeting then in my opinion it doesn't preclude them for making a decision on this application today thank you right thank you very much we didn't have councillor roberts councillor uh mr read would you turn your camera off please holiday chair uh councillor roberts please thank you very much chairman are we into general debate now please we are indeed thank you very much yes i think it's been a really interesting debate and um we've fleshed out a lot of concerns and we've got a lot of inputs um from both offices members of the public etc and i would like to thank mr sexton for the report that he gave it is detailed and i think it does point out to us um the four lines or the concerns that that needed to be looked at um however having listened to um everybody today and especially actually um having listened to the questions of councillor to the hawkins and uh and uh and it comes to the river that i'm losing names um i think that i can't possibly go along with this application and in its present form um i think as has been stated the we know that this site will be developed but i'm afraid there are just too many falls in it at the moment i'm really disappointed that the county council but maybe not surprised that they seem to have taken so little on board and have been so intractable and not listened to the parish council and the residents and uh not even i think maybe today so it seems to me you know the height uh is is far far too high the numbers are far far too high that should have come down in accordance with losing that two hectares of land there's absolutely no excuse hasn't done the hedge concerns the the fact that it hasn't followed um the agreed you know the neighbourhood plan the design plan um that are there to make and encourage us to get it right so chairman i'm hoping very much that it gets refused and i will be supporting the especially the local members and the parish council with their concerns thank you very much all right thank you very much i think we next have councillor heather williamson then councillor carne thank you councillor heather williamson please thank you chairman um i don't want to echo too much what others have said however i am in agreement that it's not suitable in my view for copham i think it does have too much of an urban design feel to it and i think the heights of the building are are unacceptable as others have said um and the we should be giving weight to the vision design statement that's what they're there for in my view but i i do appreciate that this isn't a it is a finely balanced one which people can can see either way but that's my personal views all right thank you councillor carne is that you're muted councillor carne you're muted so can you hear me now yeah fine i've had this before sometimes when i have my earphones on you can't hear that the mutes automatically even though it's not on the on teams uh this complicated site um the i found the visit on site and i i declared that i was on site uh i found the visit very useful um uh perhaps not the way that others might have thought um it was clearly the uh the in terms of the neighbourhood plan i took the advantage after point after screening have a direct look at the labour plan and the design codes at the design state um what i see which is determined the village is defined into various types of of development the village core the village and development in the village core the village the sort of victorian development and modern development and modern development the main point that it makes is that they they're very mixed very mixed type of houses um i don't actually get that the pitch of the roof is very much an issue that is commented on there and that's uh the so that i and they do seem to have been made attempt to make sure that the the development is ready to be mixed um so i actually am not actually of um of the view that it uh is that different from the design design policies uh that that in itself make a refusal in terms of the houses north of rampton road i think the key word there is actually that they are more um they won't be overshadowed the sun will the sun will never be between the houses along rampton road and the these these roads the high pitch roof is rather unusual design uh but it's a small number in a large mixed very mixed uh development i don't think that i can really stand on my heart and think that that would be another reason for refusal so there are reasons which i'm happy about uh which are not uh which we can't be sure about but they all appear to be reasons which are not material considerations uh the the matter of the link into the village well the principle of development has been determined and it was never with the area was never within the the red line so we can't insist on it um the developers indicate that he's willing to they're willing to to do something about that but that's not a matter that we can consider in the application the other thing is the access to the school the divisional site showed access to the school at the far end of the uh site right in the southern part um but the uh now they're talking about taking them out of the site to put the school near it uh i'm unhappy i'm happy about the uncertainty about this but again because it's outside the red line we can't consider that for material application consideration so uh in terms of the the vista that is a clear obstruction but as the photo showed and as was obvious on site the view of the church from the actual site is not terribly dramatic and in fact there are edges in between which could easily grow up so there's no guarantee that that vista will be maintained i don't really think it's going to be sufficient for me to say that that's the reason for refusal um in terms of the proximity to other houses to uh less greenwood we've been um the proposal has removed them again it um i'm not sure that that's adequate reason to refuse in terms of the size of the retention pond we're told that it's adequate right i'm i'm not a sufficient expert to say that it isn't adequate um site the whole site is filled with clay of earseeing clays or maybe boulder clay but parts of it are certainly very impermeable that's but the principal development on that impermeable site has been determined if they if the runoff is going to be adequate for meeting requirements i don't see that we can we're going to be able to say refuse it on that ground so i come to the view that although there are things which i'm not happy about i don't and it perhaps is not a perfect development i think it's a good enough development to it for us to grant permission and i tend to agree with the planning person and i i'm supporting with that but you know when i come to date we have councillor braddenham and then councillor rippith as in chair thank you very much councillor bradham thank you chairman um as always councillor khan comes to us with very uh interesting views um my i find this very difficult because um i there are a lot of things about this development that i find um unfortunate and one of those fundamental ones is because of the change in the outline it's the potential that the development could effectively jeopardize the way in which the land might be used for playing fields in future and but as that is outside the red line that's a difficult argument to make um i wish we could ask that the five houses north of those at rampton road were removed but we have the plan as it is in front of us um i'm also very disappointed that there isn't any internal connectivity to the east to the core of the village again that's outside the red line i'm i'm somewhat astonished that the illustrative master plan was not one of the documents that was um itemized in the outline consent uh and the other one is regarding the houses north of those um which are currently north of rampton road i am really disappointed by the statements you know that goes through from paragraphs 273 to 282 where in each case the reference is given um saying that the back to back distances we'd like are a minimum of 15 meters um and these are all you know approximately 14 meters when in fact they're a bit less you know and then there's you know loss of privacy between some plots but we think this is on balance this is just acceptable and and as uh parrot councillor morris said you know if you always go and say well this on average it's okay then you'll end up with a substandard development and i think that's a great shame um so given that this might go one way or another i would just like to request a condition um if it's possible to do that and i'm i'm not quite sure if it is possible to do it is that if this is approved that we make a condition that wherever possible the existing hedgerows should be maintained in in where in their current location wherever it's possible to do that and if necessary they might be cut shorter because i would like to see you know this council has a commitment to biodiversity and connectivity for um wildlife and so if it's possible perhaps pristata could advise us whether we could put in a condition that mentions maintaining existing hedgerows wherever it's possible to do so and not simply saying oh we can replace them with 300 meters of new ones because that's not quite the same particularly the ones that are on ramped and road which are a very ancient hedgerow which will have um you know wildlife associated with it which would take a long time to just to replace elsewhere could we take advice from Chris Carter on that about to do that thank you Chris ticardo to have your advice on the fish yeah thanks thank you chair um well with your agreement i'd like to ask michael to comment on that because i believe obviously the um hedgerows have been looked at as part of the proposed layouts of this development and therefore there is a reason why it's proposed to remove these hedgerows uh and to plant additional compensatory hedgerow elsewhere so um it may be that michael can provide some advice on that and then i can return to the principle of the condition if needs be all right thank you very much is this excellent yeah so i've been through the documents i can't find a plan that would clearly show existing and uh new hedgerows there is obviously this precautionary ecological report that was required of part of the reserve mass application which does talk about retention of hedgerows but say there's no plan unfortunately in which ones that has been reviewed by our ecology officer and they're satisfied with the details and that would be one of the approved plans um i think it's important to note that the outlying consent has imposed conditions that require the details of hardened soft landscaping and boundary treatments and i think that's where we would start to get a lot more detail um in terms of the hedgerows to be retained and perhaps you know we can impose if if we might as a proof we could perhaps impose an informed informative effects that councillor pratham is is seeking that um that's part of those details to come forward through a potential discharge of conditions applications we would like to see as much of the existing hedgerow on site retained where it is practical to do so so i think perhaps an informative that refers back to those details reserved by condition might be an appropriate mechanism rather than a condition that would be my my view chris thank you thank you chair yes thank you michael for that clarification so i think that's an important point that there are already conditions on the outline permission uh which will help to deal with this so i would be happy to agree that an informative along the lines that michael just set out would be perfectly appropriate to include and um mr kata could i just clarify that that could include both the hedge along rampton road as well as the hedge uh on the let's call it eastern side that skirts around the eastern side of the road because currently if we can be clear at the northeastern extremity of the development currently the road bends around in a curve and that just is described exactly by the current location of a hedge and i would like that to be maintained as well as far as possible elsewhere on that red line um if you zoom in very closely and go to the small print it refers to this as a a low timber a low level timber fence with trellis above um that's to the um north of the the middle block as it were and then down towards the ones nearer the southern edge of the site it refers to a knee rail but wherever it's possible i would like us to maintain that hedge if it was going to be approved yes we can certainly indicate that preference council bradham through the informative and those details as i say will be a requirement to discharge that condition of the outline consent as michael explained so yes okay but it's yes if the rest of the committee want to do that so shall we deal with that now the additional informative that council bradham is suggesting um are we all in favour of that is there anybody against i'm waiting i haven't heard anything no so by affirmation then we have the informative as for your discussion just then um i'd also say that the chat the meeting chat should only be used by members of the committee please um next speaker councillor rippeth is next thank you thank you um for letting me come in again just to highlight i think we can get something better than this i don't think this is good enough and i will be voting against but i'd also like to mention i did come to this meeting afresh at the start and yes it was useful to view the site but i've listened to all the speakers and you know coming to my own conclusions from what they said and um thank you also to michael sexton for the point about the two hectares and the space and not all of that was housing but he did say it would be 20 dwelling short so that makes more 134 i just think that there is an opportunity here um for the developer to come back with something which is more sustainable um not as um cramped in and which offers more of a biodiverse sustainable development thank you very much and the grounds for refusal are that's the rippeth um design all right design height and numbers previously um yes height and numbers and design i think are the strongest ones all right okay thank you very much uh council thane is it you do want to wish this to be well yes gentlemen thank you um i would say briefly that i agree very much with what uh councillor carne said uh i think we both listen very sympathetically to the concerns raised by local people the question at the end of this is whether there are any grounds to refuse based on material considerations in my view clearly there are not i shall be voting for it we also have councillor right wanting to speak chair very much councillor right please thank you for letting me come back chair um i'm not happy with this and i'm inclined to agree with councillor rippeth that i don't think this application is is there you know this is one of our most experienced parish councils they carry a lot of weight in what they say but my main reason for refusal will be policy co h board slash one uh the the damage to the vista from the road um because the houses are too close to les kingwood thank you very much chairman okay thank you right then i think we have councillor daunton right councillor daunton please yes thank you chairman um i've listened very carefully to all the arguments and i'd like to thank the officer and all those who've presented it it's a very difficult site um and the arguments for and against very powerful um i'm very much inclined i i'm concerned about several things first of all the attention or lack of attention it seems to me to be paid to the neighborhood plan and the village design statement um secondly um the characteristics at the height of the building uh on the design element and thirdly i think we've not we have heard about the drainage questions i'm not sure we've paid enough attention to that and i know that there was recent flooding in cocknam and i do have serious concerns about the drainage issues um and as councillor rippon said i i think that we could do better on this site and i i will be voting against it all right thank you councillor richard williams is next right councillor richard williams please oh thank you chair i'll i'll be brief um i've listened with great interest to the bait again i'd like to thank the officer michael's excellent for the report which i thought was an excellent details a very well presented report um as i said i've listened with with interest and a very open mind on this um in the end i think i am concerned about the um cocknam local plan co h1 um not being respected and the uh height of the buildings and the modern design i think at the end are um key factors for me so i plan to vote against thank you and i have no other speakers listed at this time right okay so are we ready then to go to a vote uh let's be very clear that we need to be voting on the basis of the reserved matters and the reserved matters only the principle of development it is not in question the outline is in existence so reserved matters is about layout scale appearance landscaping biodiversity and flood drainage so what i've heard so far is that the main concern is on design the height and numbers of houses in particular um not meeting the requirements of the neighborhood plan co h stroke one we vistas um as well as uh the various uh by various issues about hedges and so on so if we're ready for a vote i assume that we um are going to have mixed feelings on this so the before you go to the vote did you want to take the comments from chris carter and michael sexton who are asking speak are they okay uh mr carter thank you chair um i just wanted to seek a little further clarification on on potential reasons for refusal um the point about height is understood uh the point about numbers um i just wanted to understand a bit more about the issue with the numbers is it members feel that the uh the scheme is is too dense that the uh trying to fit too many homes too close to the wood is it that the numbers of homes are blocking the view of the church that's identified in in the neighborhood plan just so we can be specific about the point on numbers the point about height um i think both mark and i understand um clearly at this stage could be yeah well numbers i thought the argument was about it should be pro rata given the reduction anyway well there's no there's no we're doing golden's chair sorry there's no there's no um there's no policy to say that that should be the case what we need to be considering is whether the number of dwellings proposed uh delivers uh an appropriate design response to this site uh not simply um it should be pro rated uh because of the piece of land that's been removed from from the site since the outline fiction so no hang on a minute doesn't that um come into the vista argument them well that that's what i'm asking the committee to verify is it the house specifically suggests is co age stroke one in the neighborhood plan would be uh so so if i made paraphrase is that the committee considers that the number of dwellings uh within the reduced site area causes harm to that vista that might not be there if it was a lower number of dwellings is that what is that what we're saying that's right because they've put them closer to les king wood which has obscured the vista that would otherwise have been there okay that's fine and therefore the committee considers that that outweighs any other any other benefits along with the height issue as well well in combination with the other factors okay that's fine thank you that's the clarification i needed thank you mr sexton did you still wish to speak um my my comments are going to be about numbers well because there is obviously the established permission for up to 154 dwellings um i think i think it's being backed by my conservatism because this is very spacious development and if we get very prescriptive about numbers we may see an application come back in that has got much less me as a space although still within requirements obviously residential space standards may be lost should develop and come forward with a more ground form but i think i think yeah what what's been related to chris would help us if that was a reason for refusal okay okay members could everyone mute please there's some background noise at the moment okay so the proposal before you or the recommendation before you is for approval plus conditions i'm going to do a roll call um vote in just a moment so if you want to approve it you're in favor if you want to refuse it you're against uh and if you want to abstain you abstain so i will now run through uh the list so uh council bread against chairman yep council calm approve okay thank you councillor dawnton against okay council thane in for council Hawkins against and council ripeth against thank you council Roberts against chairman thank you thank you council head over limbs against and that's the richard williams against council riots against you and my vote is four so it's three four and eight against the application is therefore refused thank you very much and we move on then oh we what time is it do you want to take a break members yes i think that would be a good idea yeah 10 minutes and back a quarter to one is that all right aron are you switching off aron can you just confirm that the feed is off please thank you very much share you're now live again thank you very much and welcome back to south cams district council planning committee um we're now moving on to agenda item six which is on page 101 of your agendas um this is application s 4243 stroke 19 fl is at ultra park land to the west of neel drive at ultra park so the proposal is for the erection of two new private residential blocks with linking and central element comprising 138 revised from 144 student rooms and associated facilities a resubmission of application s 3983 stroke 18 fl you will recall that we have recently dealt with an application which has your most identical design the applicant is marching dale developments limited key considerations will be covered by the presenting officer this is not a departure the application is brought to committee because the community council has objections the agenda says that the parish council does as well but in fact the parish council chose not to comment so that's incorrect the recommendation is approval subject conditions and an s 106 agreement presenting officer is luke simpson would you do give us your presentation please mr simpson thank you chair could you i can see that yep okay great the proposal is for the erection of two new private residential blocks comprising 138 student rooms and the site is com for an orchard park which you are very likely be very familiar with and the application site is located within the development framework of orchard park and it's situated to the north of cambridge south of the a 14 and it forms part of a plot known as com for because it's described as com for in the orchard park design guide spd so the proposal would provide 138 student rooms and associate facilities there are two linear blocks linked via a bridging element as you'll see shortly orientated east to west the development would have a maximum of five stories and a maximum height of approximately 14.2 meter