Council and democracy

Agenda item

Site Visits

Minutes:

Sean Nethercott, Strategic Lead of Strategic Services, referred the Task Force to the last meeting of the Local Development Plan Task Force held on 18 March 2019 in which a site visit to Alconbury had been briefly discussed. He proposed 3 development sites that the Task Force could visit which were:

 

1.    Alconbury Weald – it was the most visited site for development by other local authorities and had planning permission for 6,500 units that included new homes, primary and secondary schools and retail units over 350,000 square feet. The site had received planning permission 4 years ago and had developed 800 units so far.

2.    Trumpington Meadows, Cambridgeshire – a slightly smaller site with 1,200 units with the same mix of units mentioned but the difference was that this site had 40% of affordable housing.

3.    Kings Cross, St Pancras – had over 2,000 new homes including a regeneration of the area. The idea was to look at the principles behind housing needs and local community needs.

 

Sean Nethercott welcomed the Task Force to suggest any other potential sites they wished to visit.

 

The Chair mentioned that she had been to Huntingdon before and noted that the developments were of a high density which was not what Thurrock was looking for or needed. In response, the Interim Director of Place, Andrew Millard, said that not all recent builds in Thurrock had not been the highest standards of quality and may be due to a lack of vision from developers. The goal of the site visits were to provide Members with a range of different types of developments to give Members an idea of what high/low density and high quality builds could look like. He went on to say the site visit of Alconbury Weald and Trumpington Meadows could be done in one day because of its proximity to each other. With a range of sites to visit, it would help to inform and create a vision for Members of what Thurrock aspire to and deliver.

 

The Chair felt that a better range of development sites could be seen and went on say that Persimmons had not been great with recent house builds because most of the third bedroom in 3 bedroom properties were too small and the roads into developments were tight. Andrew Millard answered that developments in Thurrock were changing which could be seen in recent builds such as The Echoes in Grays and Derry Avenue. He said the Council should continue these types of high quality builds with future developments.

 

On the 3 proposed site visits, the Vice-Chair said that he would be interested in visiting all 3 sites. With the Alconbury Weald and Trumpington Meadows site, he hoped that the visits would help to fill in the missing elements required for Thurrock’s Local Plan and to build affordable high quality homes into the plan. The Vice-Chair went on to say that Thurrock could not continue to build homes into Thurrock’s riverside and homes needed to be spread out around Thurrock and it was worth visiting the sites to see the development plans. Regarding Kings Cross, St Pancras, the Chair thought it would be good to see this site as well as Thurrock would have some urban intensification design due to its proximity to London.

 

Andrew Millard said that the service would liaise with developers on dates for the site visits and suggested that the site visits could be extended out to other Members to make the most of the learning experience. The Chair agreed to extend the site visits out.