I oppose this site as both the village of Felthorpe and this site are both unsuitable for development.

Felthorpe has no gas supply or street lighting. Pavements are narrow and uneven so often unsuitable for pushchairs or wheelchairs. Electricity is supplied by overhead wires with several power cuts each year. Village water supply is imperfect also experiencing annual interruptions, including the most recent on 12/12/18. Waste water infrastructure is worse with pumping station being regularly overwhelmed, leading to sewerage frequently being deposited on the lawn of a property at the end of Chapel Lane whenever there is heavy rain.

The village has no shop and only two buses into Norwich each day. The nearest shops, primary schools and doctors are located at least two miles away in Taverham, Horsford or Drayton. Since site submission, the only major employer in the village, Thrower & Rutland, has been liquidated, leaving no significant employment within 2km. Services are highly unlikely to be improved with the addition of 15-20 houses.

The local road network is poor and largely too narrow too allow lorries to pass. This situation leads to HGVs frequently mounting pavements. The nearby junction of The Street and Taverham Road and the bends on Taverham Road by Yew Tree Farm are both minor accident hotspots with the most recent accident yesterday (13/12/18).

Felthorpe is routinely used as a rat run between Cromer or Holt Road and the Fakenham Road or the A47. Traffic surveys indicate that around 4500 vehicles per day pass through these unsuitable roads and accident blackspots. Peak time traffic already queues back along Taverham Road to Church Lane from the junction with The Street. Development within the village would only aggravate current traffic issues.

Given its poor infrastructure and limited access to services and is clear to me that Felthorpe is unsuitable for further development.

The site is also particularly unsuited to development due to issues around access, surface water flooding and environmental risks.

Proposed access is via current field gate, which is up a bank on a narrow, blind bend. Site access and surrounding road would need to be significantly improved at considerable cost to avoid creating a new accident blackspot. Pedestrian access to this site is currently via an unlit, narrow lane so a new footpath would also need to be provided at cost.

The governments flood risk website and the Strategic Flood Risk Assessment both show a risk of surface water flooding across this site. Local residents have experience that heavy rain leads to pooling water on Swannington Lane near the entrance to this site.

Torrential rain also leads to water running down Church Lane and Taverham Road with storm drains unable to cope. As a result, surface runoff runs like a stream through side passages of the lower lying properties on Taverham Road, which experience minor property flooding roughly every ten years. Building on this site would out either new properties at risk of flooding or increase risk to existing neighbours.

The surface water runoff runs directlty into the Swannington Update Common SSSI and then towards Alderford Common SSSI and the River Wensum SAC. Development of this site would require significant mitigation to avoid environmental risk.

Given the likely costs and land lost to improving access and mitigating risk of surface water flooding and environmental impact, I strongly believe that this site would be unviable unless producing high density housing out of keeping with the village.