A paper is being presented to Dorset Council cabinet on 30 July which will ask members to support the council entering into a funding agreement with Homes England which will secure up to £6,310,000 of Housing Infrastructure Funding (HIF).
Following a successful bid by North Dorset District Council to Homes England for HIF Funding, Dorset Council has the opportunity to access money which will enable it to design and construct the main road within the Welbeck area.
In January 2018, Welbeck Strategic Land LLP made an application for outline planning permission to construct an urban extension to the south of Gillingham between Shaftesbury Road and New Road. This will include up to 961 dwellings and up to 2,642sq.m of retail, community, health, and leisure uses.
The development will also include new and enhanced pedestrian/cycle routes, open spaces, roads, car parking and vehicular access.
Cllr Ray Bryan, Dorset Council’s portfolio holder for Highways, Travel and Environment said:
“If Cabinet supports the recommendations, it will mean the development in Gillingham is likely to be completed seven years quicker than if we don’t enter into this funding agreement. The grant from Homes England will help provide the vital infrastructure this development needs, which in turn will help provide much needed affordable housing and benefits for the local community.”
The land forms part of a wider development site allocated for development by North Dorset District Council. The wider development site has the potential to deliver a further 749 homes and incorporates land controlled by CG Fry and Son Limited and Taylor Wimpey.
The council must recover the HIF funding from the developers with the agreement that any sums recovered may be reinvested in housing projects across Dorset.
And of course CG Fry and Taylor Wimpey will be building at cost won’t they..
You have to be joking. Gillingham is already set to have 2200 houses between Gillingham and Shaftesbury as well as 200 at Bay below Bowridge Hill. If you want people not to have to drive do not build houses in rural locations where there are no public transport options, jobs or public services. This is just a box ticking exercise for the newly created Dorset Council. All it cares about is more money from council tax.
And this is how the council deals with the climate emergency. By building 900 new homes. No doubt on green land
Back in the 80’s, when the Gillingham through-pass was being discussed, a developer offered to build, at his own expense, a PROPER BY-PASS, if he could have consent to build between the by-pass and the town.
This was rejected by a short sighted council, with the result that we have serious traffic congestion, a ludicrous traffic light system, the houses will come anyway, and Gillingham STILL NEEDS A PROPER BY-PASS!
It is an historical fact that Great Britain will be involved with a war of some sort in the decades/centuries to come and during WW2 the country was on the point of starving with a population of some 45 million. Now with a population of 65 million just consider how the good quality land that you wish to bury under concrete will be so essential. At least solar panel sites could be cleared but not houses. Surely it is not beyond the wit of planners to insist on high-rise housing and to only use low grade farmland. You are condemning our children to a life of imports and food shortages by this action. STOP IT!!
Who is going to buy or rent these new affordable houses? Also the town struggles with the traffic, especially during the rush hours, now! Another potential problem is how are the existing roads going to cope with the increased commercial vehicles, with the need for food to feed the extra mouths??? Sorry I do think this increase in homes has really been thought seriously?