Stockton Council’s planning committee have unanimously rejected controversial plans for up to 550 new homes on green wedge land in Ingleby Barwick
Controversial plans for up to 550 new homes on green wedge land in Ingleby Barwick have been thrown out.
Stockton Council's planning committee yesterday unanimously rejected an outline planning application for the residential development on an 80-acre site adjacent to Thornaby Road and the new Free School site.
Similar plans for up to 550 homes at neighbouring Little Maltby Farm had been unanimously rejected by the committee in February.
An online petition had been set up against the new application with more than 250 signatures and 21 letters of objection lodged against it.
Concerns included loss of greenfield site; shortage of school places particularly at primary level; Ingleby Barwick does not need more housing and the impact on wildlife.
Stockton planners had recommended the scheme be refused, saying any benefits of the additional housing “would be outweighed by the harm the proposal would have to the green wedge and the wider character of the area.”
Ingleby Barwick independent councillor Kevin Faulks told the committee: “We have had hundreds of people objecting to this. We’re just creating more and more traffic on these roads.”
Louise Baldock, Labour parliamentary candidate for Stockton South, described the scheme as “a housing development in the middle of nowhere”.
“This development would be bigger than Maltby and Hilton added together,” she said.
Thornaby independent councillor Steve Walmsley, on the planning committee, said: “At some point you have to say enough is enough.”
Stockton South MP James Wharton welcomed the rejection of the housing development. But he warned that having turned the 550 houses down Stockton Council “now need to commit to fighting” any appeal by the developers “with full and good quality legal representation”.
“They must not allow these houses to get permission by the back door by refusing to fight the appeal,” he said.
“It will make a mockery of democracy if the appeal is allowed to go through with no resistance when the planning committee has made its position so clear.”
Jersey-based Tiviot Way Investments have already appealed to the Planning Inspectorate against the rejection of its scheme in February.
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