Plans for 450-home estate opposed by residents

Initial plans to build 450 homes in Shrewsbury are set to go before councillors on Tuesday.

Barwood Development Securities Ltd wants to build 450 homes just off of Ellesmere Road, near the Herongate estate, on land that is currently a field. It has submitted an outline planning application, to establish if the development is acceptable in principle.

People in the area have questioned whether the infrastructure is in place to support more housing, citing drainage, access to doctors and high volumes of local traffic as potential problems.

Shropshire Council said the planning committee would make a decision based on the application's "merits".

If given the green light, a final planning application would have to be submitted and approved before the project could go ahead.

The outline application said the new development would "provide a high quality, sustainable neighbourhood in an exceptional location close to Shrewsbury Town centre".

The plan has received numerous objections, with notable ones relating to highway safety, access to local schools and GPs, as well as other community infrastructure.

Natasha Jones, moved to Ellesmere Road during the coronavirus lockdown, but said she would not have come if she had realised before how busy the road was.

"It's hard to get out of my drive, the traffic backs up at peak times and it must be about three quarters of a mile out of town," she said.

"I'm not against people having houses, but I just think that the location is not really suitable."

Pat Jones has lived on the road since 1997, and has campaigned against the number of developments in the area.

She said her house shook with the volume of traffic and that there was a pool of water in her communal car park due to issues with drainage.

"The amount of houses [now] is shocking almost, because they were only agreed to if the North West Relief Road was constructed," Pat said.

"You've got no relief road from the traffic point of view, so there's going to be even more coming down one way into town, which is already very noisy, polluted, dangerous because the school is here and it's hard to cross the road."

Barwood's own design and access statement references extensively the "planned new north west relief road" in making its case, although that scheme has since been scrapped, despite already costing £32m.

A decision on the outline plans was deferred at a committee meeting in February, with the minutes stating "concern was expressed in relation to the adequacy of transport modelling and the potential cumulative impacts of the development on the wider transport network".

The developer has since submitted additional arguments, concluding that - even without the new road - the estate can be built "without any severe residual cumulative impact on the road network".

In a statement, Shropshire Council said, like all other applications, the proposals would be "considered on their merits", taking into account "local and national planning policies".

It added it would also include "comments raised as part of the statutory consultation, and other material considerations".

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