Dozens of villagers crowded into a packed public meeting last night (Monday) to voice their concerns at plans for a controversial new development of 45 new homes in West Huntspill.
Over 60 villagers attended Monday’s public meeting organised by the Parish Council in which developer Edenstone talked through its plans to build 45 new homes on a field next to the village’s school and A38 besides the junction with New Road.
As Burnham-On-Sea.com reported here, the outline planning application for the site was narrowly approved in a split vote last year.
Residents say the plans would be “totally out of keeping” with the surrounding area and they also voiced concerns over a loss of green space, plus road safety due to extra traffic and no road crossing point for children using the school, plus a lack of parking.
Edenstone, which has recently taken over development of the site, says it plans to submit three planning applications to formalise the detailed plans for the site covering design, highways and ecology.
The developer says the site will deliver 18 “much-needed affordable homes” as part of the overall 45-homes site, plus new public open space, parking facilities plus a new entry road onto the A38.
Parish Council Chairman John Wakefield told Burnham-On-Sea.com after Monday’s meeting: “It was a very heated meeting as we expected – we know there are strong feelings about this development which are perfectly understandable. We fully understand the frustration.”
“Edenstone has taken over the site since the outline planning application was approved in 2022, so we we invited them along to give a presentation, but they weren’t expecting so many residents to come along and weren’t really set up for a such a large audience.”
“Residents wanted to express their views and some were willing to listen to what the developer had to say. I ended up extending the time for the session to 40 minutes from the planned 20 minutes to give more time for the matter, including covering a housing needs assessment that had been carried out. We may well ask the developer back to do another session.”
The Parish Council previously raised concerns about the housing being an ‘over development’ of the site and it also expressed concern about safety and design quality.
65 letters were submitted against the scheme by local residents last year when the plans were considered.
