Housing plans given go-ahead at third bid

A group of campaigners say they are “disappointed” that nine houses will be built on land near Bath City Farm.

Permission was given for nine homes to be built on The Hollow after two previous bids were rejected and dismissed at appeal.

Almost 180 residents objected to the plans, warning that the development would significantly harm road safety and claiming the developer had only paid “lip service” to ecological concerns.

Residents held protests and campaigned under the ‘Save our Hillside’ slogan, resulting in the road layout plans being revised in the final application after police also raised safety concerns.

Now residents say they are “disappointed” the application was successful - despite councillors also raising concerns about the impact on biodiversity.

Southdown councillor Paul Crossley had said it was worrying that the developer had not considered the “tremendous” impact Bath’s Clean Air Zone has had on traffic flows in the southwest of the city and called the scheme “unacceptable”.

A spokesman for the Save Our Hillside group said: “The result was disappointing. It was clear that many councillors on the committee were opposed to the proposed development, but they were guided by the Bath and North East Somerset planning official that they should not object on grounds that the previous application’s planning inspector had already ruled were acceptable.

“This left them with few grounds for rejection other than the new highways scheme. We believe this new scheme will be less effective than the current scheme because the two new proposed build-outs, at and above the Cotswold View junction, rely on adjacent parked cars being in place to complete the single carriageway restriction.

“When the parked cars are not in place there will be no traffic calming effect.

“Our speaker did make this point to the committee.”

Yet the group did say that this application was better than previous ones as only half of the site will be developed.

The spokesman continued: “Overall, this planning application is preferable to the previous developments proposed in 2008 and 2015 as only half of this hillside site is being developed with ecological mitigations being put in place on the other half.”