Larkfleet Homes Display Plans For 140 Homes Near Kenwick Road

April 29th 2014

Here we go again. On Monday, 28th April Larkfleet Homes held an exhibition at the London Road Pavilion of their plans for around 140 homes in the south of Louth. This follows planning applications for Fulmar Drive, the Southern Gateway on Legbourne Road, 240 houses near Grimsby Road, 29 at the old swimming pool on Victoria Road, and around 45 off Eastfield Road. Developers are piling in to make applications to build in Louth, and there's the sense that they are desperate to get approval before the available spaces are taken up by other developers. It's a land rush.

The plans on display were only outline ones, so they're likely to change in response to feedback from residents. The site in question is near Kenwick Pastures, and directly to the west of the 970 homes Southern Gateway development that ELDC recently turned down.

The detail

This development will have three large ponds to deal with drainage issues. These ponds offer a tiered drainage system, whereby one drains into another until they are all full. Larkfleet Homes representatives seemed confident that the overall development would leave the drainage no worse than it is currently.

Plans also included one play area.

There would be three exits from the estate on foot, but only one by road, onto Kenwick Road. This isn't currently a particularly busy road, but that may change significantly if the neighbouring Southern Gateway development is granted permission on appeal.

The proposed housing mix comprises all two-storey homes of between one and five-bedrooms. It breaks down as 16 one-bedroom, 14 two-bedroom, 70 three-bed, 28 four-bedroom, and 11 five-bedroom homes of various sizes.

One-bedroom	Two-bedroom	Three-bedroom	Four-bedroom	Five-bedroom
16	14	70	28	11

What stands out about this development is that there are no other types of building apart from homes. There's no sheltered housing, for instance, and no schools, shops, or other public buildings. I think it's too small for anything like that to be a requirement, but it's still a large enough expansion of the town to put pressure on the local infrastructure.

Neighbouring residents may be concerned about whether the new development would overlook their properties. The pavements and verges around the edges of the development, coupled with the proposal to limit it to two-storey properties, suggests that this may not be a big problem.

Sweetening the deal

Larkfleet Homes is offering a "community fund" of £500 for each home built, which can be spent on anything specified by the town council. A representative told me that this offer of money isn't conditional on the council's acceptance of the planning proposal, it's only conditional on the homes being built.

This somewhat balances a few of the problems that yet another development will bring, in terms of general pressure on Louth's infrastructure. However, there are some problems that can't be overcome by money alone, such as the increase in traffic that will be inevitable as a result of this development.

Louth is in the grip of an application boom, and not necessarily a housebuilding boom. What happens when permission is granted, but nothing is built? A company's solvency or reliability isn't a planning consideration (in that it plays no part in whether the council refuse or allow a development). So we may end up with plenty of approvals for this and similar developments, but still lack the housing that ELDC wants in this area.