Application 18/03301 - Boyn Valley Industrial Estate
Comments on Application 18/03301 - Boyn Valley Industrial Estate
Outline permission for layout, scale and access only, for erection of four buildings to create 216 apartments with 189 parking spaces.
We object to this scheme which represents excessive overdevelopment of the site. Within the Identified Sites for Residential Development published by RBWM in January 2014 the adjacent site of Travis Perkins was featured. This is of similar land area to this application and 68 potential dwellings were proposed - low rise flats and maisonettes. This Boyn Valley Industrial Estate site did not even feature in this exercise. In the interim four years the drive to maximise the number of dwelling units and developers' profits has seen high density developments, of smaller dwelling units combined with inadequate parking provision and amenity space.
This application is for 216 flats in four blocks - rising from four storeys in the west of the site up to nine storeys in the east. Of these flats 54 are 1 bed, 154 are 2 bed and 8 are 3 bedroom. Under current RBWM parking planning policy these would ideally have 378 parking spaces. However, because of " proximity" to the Town Centre and Railway Station this number is reduced by exactly 50%....to 189. There is no parking provision for visitors and no potential on street parking in Boyn Valley Road. The easternmost Block D of 7 / 8 and 9 storeys has a height, bulk and mass that will overshadow and dominate the locality. The maximum height of the blocks throughout the site should be as in Blocks A and B - four storeys. Over the site the total number of flats should be reduced by 50% to 108 units, with the number of parking spaces being retained at 189.
Even 108 flats represents a high density development far in excess of what was envisaged for the Travis Perkins site. If the Travis Perkins site is subsequently developed at the same density as this proposal, then Boyn Valley Road will have a total of more than 400 flats in a few hundred yards. On a positive note that the living space of the flats achieves the minimum required by Nationally Described Space Standards.
We remain concerned at the loss of commercial businesses and employment opportunity that that is caused by demolishing and redeveloping such estates as Boyn Valley.
