CAMPAIGNERS are celebrating a successful campaign to prevent housebuilding at the Batch in Hanham.
South Gloucestershire Council planners have refused outline permission for Redrow and Ashfield Land to build 140 houses on the 20 acre site south of Hencliffe Way because it is in the Green Belt.
Access to the development would have been built by knocking down a house on Hencliffe Way and building a new road into the fields. Most of the homes would have been two-storey houses, with a few apartments, too.
In a decision notice, the council said: “The application site is located outside the defined limits of development, within the open countryside where development is strictly controlled. The residential development is of a scale and type that is not appropriate in this location.
“The site is within the open countryside and is part of a network of green infrastructure, with intervisibility to and from the east and to the south-east, including from public rights of way on site and in the vicinity. The development will result in the loss of the open character and harm to the visual and recreational amenity of the site.”
The plans had attracted much opposition from neighbours, over 1,400 of whom petitioned against the development. The refusal was welcomed by campaigners, including the Hanham District Green Belt Conservation Society.
A society spokesman said: “We’re pleased this decision clearly reflects community feeling, with reference made to over 1,500 objections registered against this proposal. We thank everyone who took the time to support the campaign. Collectively your voices have made a difference.”
Many people living in houses close to the fields wrote to the council, objecting to the plans for new houses which they said would “destroy the area”.
One said: “I’m lucky enough to be someone who has the honour of living in one of these houses nearby, spending time walking in the beautiful woodland where we get to see various wildlife on a daily basis. If you destroy this area, you destroy the wildlife.
“The parking will be terrible, the doctors’ surgery will be put into crisis, and you will fill our beautiful country air with pollution. Hanham won’t be the same if this is built on.”
By Alex Seabrook, Local Democracy Reporting Service