Thursday, December 04, 2008

Land West of Gilberdyke's Railway Hotel to be released for development

The land West of the Railway Hotel under water after normal rainfall
(Please note levels of houses in background)

There has been a rumour circulating for a few months that the land west of Gilberdyke's old Railway Hotel site has received planning permission and is being marketed as such. Needless to say this rumour is untrue…. for the moment that is.

Yesterday’s East Riding Mail carried a front-page story indicating that Greenfield land already allocated for building East of Sandholme Road and North of the railway station is to be released for development.

Unfortunately this is not quite true either, and I can confirm that all land East of Sandholme Road that was allocated in the Local Plan has already been developed.

BUT there is a small parcel of land North of the railway station that is to be released AND in addition land..... 'West of the Railway Hotel, Station Road' .....is only now to be released - if the proposals are approved.

Therefore Gilberdyke can probably expect a planning application for the Railway Hotel site and land to the West to be forthcoming.

All this as a result of Central Government imposing centralist targets on local councils for Greenfield development.

My thoughts on building on Greenfield sites and Greenbelt protection is broadly in line with Conservative Party policy - particularly in the area of strengthening local democracy and giving greater incentives to local authorities to build new homes with supporting infrastructure. Which in Gilberdyke's case would mean the community's voice being listened to, and improving the village infrastructure prior to/or at the same time as any further housing development.

Conservative Party Policy in this area is as follows:

Conservatives have pledged to scrap regional planning and the unelected regional assemblies.

• A Conservative Government will abolish the undemocratic and unwieldy tier of regional planning across England. This will include changing the law to scrap the Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs) and Regional Planning Bodies (currently the regional assemblies, soon to be RDAs).

Conservatives will return their powers to elected local councils.

• As a logical consequence of scrapping the regional plans, if the RSSs have already been implemented, we will allow councils to revise their local plans (‘Local Development Frameworks’) to undo the changes that the Regional Spatial Strategy forced on them. This will allow local communities to protect their local environment, and decide themselves the most appropriate level of development for their area.

National planning guidance will remain to provide a framework for local authorities – although such guidance will be amended in some ways. For example, we want to see greater powers for communities to protect neighbourhoods against ‘garden grabbing’

The Conservatives will be announcing in due course further proposals to strengthen local democracy and to give greater incentives to local authorities to build new homes with supporting infrastructure.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There will be some interesting drainage problems to solve here. I believe the only drainage presently serving the area West of the Railway Hotel site is via a pipe under the station yard to Bishopsoil Drain or soakaway drainage. Soakaways on clay are as much use as chocolate teapots so no doubt we can look forward to more village flood problems or Network Rail will need persuading to dig up the road to the station with all the upheaval, disruption, and cost that will entail. That particular bit of land would be far better as a recreation park with a decent trackside fence.

Anonymous said...

Paul,

No doubt any development on this site would involve raising the level to avoid flood risk to the new dwellings. This would inevitably lead to the flood risk being passed to existing dwellings. It was clear during the 2007 floods that this land flooding provided relief for some of the existing properties. Loss of this flood relief land could have catastrophic implications for the existing dwellings.

John Jessop
Gilberdyke