Pace Hill plan comes under fire
Deja vu as developer lodges second attempt
A prediction that a developer’s second bid to build dozens of houses in Milnathort would be met with objections similar to those lodged against its first has been borne out.
Speaking to the PA earlier this month Milnathort Community Council’s vice chairman Craig Williams predicted Dundas Estate and Development Co Ltd’s second application to build houses at Pace Hill would be as “equally unacceptable” to residents as its first.
He said at the time the group was also concerned that Dundas Estates had again applied to build a greater number of houses at the site north of the town’s Linden Park than Perth and Kinross Council’s Local Development Plan (LDP) stipulates.
The company’s first application to build 80 houses at the site, which was abandoned in January this year, was met with 37 objections. Most raised concerns about the proposed development’s impact on the town’s road network and its public services.
Now its second application, which was lodged with local authority planners in May, has so far been met with 66 similar objections.
In its objection Milnathort Community Council says the extra traffic movements the “over intensive” development will bring about will “adversely affect road safety”, particularly at the town’s Wester Loan/Stirling Road crossroads.
The group’s letter goes on: “The development as proposed would see an increase of up to 210 additional cars, the vast majority of which will require to travel south on North Street and through Wester Loan.
“Both of these routes have never been designed to deal with any volumes of traffic, always having been residential areas.”
It adds: “The over intensive development will also put increased stress on the local GP services and primary school and water treatment which are already stretched.”
Anticipating the application will have to be determined by the council’s development management committee their letter concludes: “We would ask the committee to exercise their powers to refuse this application on the grounds of inappropriate housing density and insufficient road capacity.”
Meanwhile Kinross Community Council has also filed an objection to the proposed scheme, again raising its own concerns that local authority planners appear to be regularly granting developers permission to build more houses on sites than is stipulated in the LDP.
The group’s letter says: “The LDP is supposed to balance the requirement for housing with the infrastructure available. In Kinrossshire we are seeing proposals with housing numbers routinely well in excess of that stated in the LDP for the sites concerned.
“We have already seen an extra 21 houses granted at the former Kinross High School site (representing a 30 per cent increase on the LDP allocation) and an extra 40 houses at Lathro Farm (an increase of 25 per cent on the LDP allocation).
“This application, at 77 dwellings, is a staggering 54 per cent over the recommended maximum number of 50 dwellings stated in the LDP for this site.
“Our local health service, schools and roads network are already under strain before any of these houses have been built.”
The community council’s letter continues: “Milnathort is in the Loch Leven catchment area. It is most important that housing numbers in the LDP are not exceeded in this area because of the risk to the ecology of Loch Leven by phosphorus pollution caused by foul water drainage.
“The loch has statutory protection as a Special Protection Area. Paragraph 7.1.8 of the LDP (page 198) says that housing numbers were reduced by 10 per cent for the Kinross area in recognition of this.
“This makes it even more deplorable that the council keeps giving permission to developers to exceed the stated numbers.
“PKC will be contravening its own local plan if it gives consent to this proposal.”
The application will now likely need to be determined by the council’s development management committee in due course.