Wokingham Borough Council has refused an application to build 81 homes on a site in Swallowfield.
The submission from planning agent Boyer on behalf of its client would have seen development on land west of Trowes Lane and north of Charlton Lane in Swallowfield.
It had submitted a full planning application for 81 properties. Some 40% of these were defined as “affordable homes”.
The application also included open spaces, landscaping, biodiversity enhancements, new vehicular access off Trowes Lane, pedestrian and cycle links, and associated infrastructure.
Many hundreds of objections were received by local residents.
The decision was made on January 10 2024 – some 11 months after the original application was submitted.
In its decision notice, Wokingham Borough Council said the application provided “.. an unsustainable form of development, being of a scale which fails to reflect the level of services and facilities in the location and, as a result, would lead to an unacceptable level of car dependency.
It also noted how the development proposal “ .. represented unacceptable development outside of development limits, within the countryside, out of scale with the existing settlement of Swallowfield and contrary to the spatial objectives of the development plan.”
