Personal comments of Alan Wight (Community Councillor), not the official view of the Community Council who will discuss the proposal at the December meeting:

Details of a new planning application have been published today by Strutt & Parker, who are representing the landowner of Blackbrook Farm.

Councillors Cindy Hinds, David Williams and myself met with representatives of Strutt and Parker last month and had initial sight of the plans. At the meeting, several assurances were given to us:

- the landowner is keen to work with the community to help to provide a development suited to the needs of the community (they have consulted our Place Plan)
- they will include 30% affordable housing on the site
- the landowner has no intention of developing more of the land to the north (down the hill) from this proposal, although they do own that land

We gave some specific feedback at the meeting:

- as a community we will oppose any developments outside of our settlement boundary prior to the Local Development Plan process.
- if this development were to go ahead, we have requested that bungalows are included adjacent to Vounog Hill so as to have the last impact on the existing properties on the hill.
- public open space in the form of a park with access for the disabled / pushchairs would be preferred to a further children's play area.
- there are too many 4-bedroom properties in the plan
- if the field beyond the site is not to be used for development could it be made available as public open space and potentially a sports field?

At this time, the landowner has opted not to adopt these requests and has asked to wait until the end of the public consultation period in order to include other ideas and suggestions before submitting to planning.

The representatives did accept that the landowner felt that they couldn't wait for the LDP process given the number of other speculative applications around the village. We view this as a clear failing of Welsh planning policy.

New Planning Application - Vounog Hill