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Overdevelopment of Knowle could cause problems for town’s drains

Pegasus Life’s latest batch of amendments to their planning application, has provoked the following letter, sent to the local press:

‘Sir
Residents and businesses downhill from the Knowle should be alerted to one of the 28 documents that PegasusLife has added to their planning application for the Knowle site. The letter that heads their 215 page ‘On Site Attenuation Report’ (document 2464318 on the EDDC Planning pages) discusses arrangements to deal with potential flash floods in episodes of heavy rain. With heavy rain incidents likely to increase in number and intensity in the coming years, it becomes more likely that the lower parts of town are at risk of flash floods as the town centre drains are overwhelmed. This could be made worse by the over-development of the Knowle. In their original application PegasusLife planned to reduce the amount of rainwater going into the town’s drains by diverting excess water into soakaways. However, their latest ground survey has shown that the types of soil and their distribution means this is ‘not technically feasible’. An alternative solution was to install attenuation tanks (basically large holding tanks that drain slowly) near the existing car park and under the EDDC depot at the SW corner of the site. It turns out that these tanks would have to be so large to cope with predicted flows they would be difficult and expensive to build. PegasusLife make it clear in their letter they do not want to deal with this problem, partly because “it is not viable in terms of cost for the project”. Bearing in mind the huge profit the company stands to make by trying to cram more than one hundred apartments onto the site and trying to avoid contributing anything to affordable housing in the town by claiming their apartment blocks are care homes, this does not wash. Let us hope that EDDC is not so desperate to complete the sale that they let PegasusLife get away with this.
Ed Dolphin, Sidmouth ‘

REMINDER: Deadline for your comments on the 28 latest documents, is this FRIDAY 11th NOVEMBER. See our previous post for details.


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URGENT! Just two more days left for comment on latest revisions to Knowle plans. DEADLINE THIS FRIDAY (11/11/2016).

Please comment on latest changes to Pegasus Life planning application (quote ref. 16/0872/MFUL), not later than this FRIDAY 11 November by emailing planningcentral@eastdevon.gov.uk or writing to the Central Team at EDDC Knowle, Sidmouth.

Please send a copy to Heloise at Town Council on planningclerk@sidmouth.gov.uk .

Revised drainage and bat mitigation reports and changes to Building E are available on the EDDC website and can be viewed at the Council Offices at Knowle.

NOTE: Objections should be in your own words, and must be based on planning grounds, as in the submission below, provided as an example:

‘Amendments to the design and footprint of Building E and associated landscaping:

EDDC’s Chief Planning Officer’s concerns about the “bulk, scale and massing” * of Buildings D and E resulting from their forward projection as well as their impact on the listed summerhouse and his recommendation that “Building E be set back “ to the existing office footprint “to remove the harm to the setting of the listed building” have received only a token response from PegasusLife, with minor and mainly cosmetic changes that do little to address the issues. Although Building E has been set back a few metres it will be on higher ground and the equivalent of at least 60 feet high, dwarfing the listed folly. Its impact will be at least as serious as was the previous proposal, especially as ground levels will be raised as well. The two buildings D & E will dominate the park and in no way “tastefully ornament” the listed building. (The recent growth of vegetation near the folly is a direct result of neglect on the part of the Council. Until recently the listed building has enjoyed a spacious green setting and this should have been and should be maintained.)

Drainage:
The excessive number of apartments and the bulk and massing of the buildings, particularly those on the lawn terraces, together with the steep slope of the internal road leading to the car park and raised ground levels will exacerbate the flood/drainage problems referred to in the latest drainage report. Planting a few small trees will in no way compensate for the large ones chopped down .

It would be hard to find a more obvious example of overdevelopment and unsustainable development than this.

(* see letter from Tibbalds 4 August 2016, in Consultee Comments)’


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‘EDDC is ordered to make Knowle information public’, Sidmouth Herald reports

From today’s Sidmouth Herald:

‘A transparency regulator has given district chiefs one month to reveal details they have tried to keep private on their move away from Sidmouth.
Campaigner Jeremy Woodward submitted Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to East Devon District Council (EDDC) about the decision to sell the site of its Knowle HQ to PegasusLife. When the authority refused to release some documents, he appealed to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The ICO has now ruled that the authority should release ‘full, unredacted’ details of the agreement it entered into with the developer, the price it is prepared to pay,as well as minutes of meetings and correspondence on the decision to award the contract.
Back in 2014, EDDC was ordered to reveal the details of documents it preferred to keep secret – but instead chose to contest the ICO ruling. It lost at a tribunal and was ordered to release a tranche of key documents on its relocation project.
Mr Woodward, whose FoI request led to the 2014 battle, said: “The question now is whether the council will again contest the ICO’s ruling.
“This goes to the heart of how the council operates.
“As the ICO says in its ruling, this is very much an issue of transparency.” The ICO ruled that EDDC should release the conditional price PegasusLife is prepared to pay for Knowle, but not details of the build cost for the authority’s new HQ at Honiton, as this could affect its ability to negotiate with contractors.
It said the case is about the council‘spending public money on its own facilities, for its own purposes’.
The ICO said: “[EDDC] has argued that it needs to change offices as, overall, doing so would save the public money compared to staying in its current offices.
“The public, however, cannot know whether this is true without further information being open for them to scrutinise.”

PegasusLife hopes to build a retirement community of 115 homes at Knowle, with some facilities open to the public. The site is allocated for 50 homes in EDDC’s Local Plan.
The planning application is set to go to its development management committee next month.

An EDDC spokeswoman said: “The council has received the decision from the ICO and is considering the content.” ‘