A new home could be built at an estate in Woodley where previous plans have been rejected.
A property owner has applied to build a new three-bedroom house in South Lake Crescent.
However, two previous plans for a new home at this site were rejected by Wokingham Borough Council’s planning department.
An appeal against refusal was dismissed in 2021, with the latest plan being submitted this May.
This plan was recently discussed by Woodley Town Council’s planning & community committee.
Councillor June Taylor (Labour, Bulmershe) said: “My understanding is it’s all about creating that sort of smooth curve into the rest of the road, and basically what they’ve done is whereas they had the new property lined up with the front, they’ve now put it on a tilt and also there’s a conservatory on the back of it.
“The appeal was all around about the fact that there is a bit of a unity of design there and that lining that up in a straight line broke that and also it had an effect on the sight lines into the rest of the road as you go around the corner, that was a bit dodgy I think.”
To address this, the frontage of the planned home has been repositioned.
An architect from Paul Edwards Architecture wrote: “By orienting the dwelling to face existing road frontages, appropriate relationships are formed with adjacent dwellings and rear gardens.
“The form of layout minimises any adverse effect on privacy and will also ensure that there is a good degree of surveillance in the public realm to foster safety and security.”
The applicant had sought pre-application advice from Wokingham Borough Council’s planning department before submitting the latest application.
Cllr Taylor said: “Logically, you’d think what they were doing if they’d gone back to the council was addressing those points.”
It was also judged that the project would be beneficial in terms of parking, as it would provide two parking spaces each for the new home and the existing house.
That involves sealing off the existing rear access in favour of a shared access for the existing house and the new home.
It was noted that the committee had not objected to the previous plans, with no objections being raised to the new project either.
You can view the application by typing reference 251185 into Wokingham Borough Council’s planning portal.
Both of the previous applications from 2020 and 2021 sought to build a larger four-bedroom home on the plot.
