Published: Friday, 4th July, 2008 09:00
"Not the right development"
By Annabel Williams
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A PLAN to demolish a house and build nine flats in its place in a leafy Caversham road has been turned down, much to neighbours’ delight.
Harmill Developments wanted to knock down number 20 Chazey Road and put up a three-storey block of flats, along with parking at the front and surrounding landscaping.
But more than 50 residents wrote to Reading Borough Council in protest over the scheme, as did The Warren and District Residents’ Association and Caversham and District Residents’ Association.
The letters listed dozens of reasons why the project should not go ahead, with neighbours fearful that the flats would worsen traffic and parking problems, that parking at the front of the development would be an “eyesore” and that more cars would be forced to park in Chazey Road because not enough spaces were supplied.
Letter writers also complained that the style of the building would be detrimental to the road, that it was too tall and an “overdevelopment”.
Amenity issues were also high on the list of concerns, from worries over balconies overlooking other properties to the view from the neighbouring Mapledurham Playing Fields being affected.
There was also a call to use section 106 money, a payment developers pay to local councils whenever they build houses, to be used to restore Mapledurham Pavilion. But Harmill offered no section 106 agreement.
Planning committee member and Mapledurham ward councillor, Fred Pugh, asked for the application to be considered at the latest committee meeting because it was the first of its kind in the road.
Cllr Pugh said that residents next door to the site had already had letters from developers suggesting they should sell part of their back gardens.
He added: "This is not the right development next door to a long line of bungalows which follow this site.
“It is completely out of character with the neighbourhood.”
The committee refused the plan for a variety of reasons, including that the development “would appear out of character with the scale, flow and rhythm of the existing bungalows and would be detrimental to the street scene”.
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