Object
Site Proposals document
Representation ID: 13578
Received: 05/03/2018
Respondent: Mr Matt Johnston
If community members are required to summarise because anything more than 100 words is too long to read, I suggest you should seriously reconsider your invitation to the public who are affected by these proposals to help you shape your plans.
Objection on the grounds of adverse impact on the character of the area, deemed one of historic and environmental interest, in juxtaposition to the themes laid out in your Sustainability Appraisal. Additionally, infrastructure is not adequate along Skinners Lane, Castle Street and the Bridge into Wroxham.
Your sustainability appraisal discusses protecting historic areas of interest, landscape and biodiversity, particularly of the broads and yet you want to build a small housing development on the outskirts of a broads conservation area, with Palaeolithic and Neolithic evidence, but most certainly medieval remains, as well as a large and diverse wildlife. Please refer to the Wroxham Conservation Area Character Statement by Broadland District Council of 2010. I will happily provide you with a copy if you can't locate one.
The document refers to Skinners Lane as being softened by the trees and meadows on the east bank of the river. So important is the east bank to Broadland Council, that the owners of the field beside it housing 4 horses have been unable to erect a small shelter for the animals to protect them from the rain and the cold. Yet the GNLP proposal for 50 houses beside the east bank is deemed acceptable.
Skinners Lane is a single lane road which currently struggles to cater for the influx of traffic to and from the football ground on match days. To accommodate the 50 houses and their inevitable 2 cars per house, as well as the deliveries and requirements for emergency services to access the estate safely, the infrastructure would need to be improved via road widening which would significantly impact the east bank of the river, it's biodiversity and character.
Currently Castle Street, the entry point to Skinners Lane, already becomes backed up with traffic trying to exit the area, even with the small number of houses in existence.
Additionally, the bridge currently connecting this end of Wroxham with the main Wroxham Road is small and already congested. It regularly bottlenecks and creates long queues of traffic into Wroxham. Add the traffic from the new development and this will significantly increase traffic into and out of Wroxham via the bridge.
Should this proposal for 50 houses be deemed necessary, we would object to the use of Skinners Lane as a through road and instead counter propose that a new entry point to the development is connected to the Wroxham Road via the Salhouse side of the bridge.