'Let down' Desborough residents fight decision to turn dead end into main estate road

Residents on Desborough's Grange estate are preparing to fight a planning application due to be considered by North Northants Council Strategic Planning Committee next week.

Last year, people living in Rowan Close discovered access to a 700-home development on fields near their homes would use their cul-de-sac as a main through route - years after they were promised it wouldn't be.

Bellway Homes’ plans for the Grange phase II, on land to the north of the estate built more than a decade ago, said access could not be through Rowan Close for ‘legal reasons’.

But with plans showing access to the new homes via Rowan Close, residents will follow up their objection letters and petition backed by ten local councillors at the meeting to be held on August 22.

Rowan Close resident Matthew Peleszok, who moved there in 2013, said: "We feel extremely let down by North Northants Council and their underhand tactics to plough through the development.

"This is not about us not wanting the development, it’s just the changes that means all the traffic will come through Rowan Close.

"It’s going to affect us. At the moment there’s 20 cars that pass through at rush hour, now there will be an estimated 200 cars. There’s quite a lot of green spaces for the children to play on. It will completely change those kids’ lifestyles. We are pushing for access off Back Lane near West Lodge so all the traffic could go there.”

Plans for the scheme show the narrow, unadopted road will provide access, years after many bought their homes on the basis they were assured it wouldn't be and without consultation with residents.

It comes after a council officer admitted a transport assessment from 2016 was "a bit of a fudge" in emails released under Freedom of Information laws.

Part of the plans submitted by Bellway is a transport assessment, dated from 2016, which does not include a traffic assessment for Rowan Close or nearby Ironwood Avenue.

An email sent in 2019 by Kettering Council's interim head of development services, released under the Freedom of Information Act, said there was "definitely" a need for a revised transport/traffic assessment or addendum as the consented assessment was "a bit of a fudge".

It added: "We now know from the design code work that this (the southern access) will be Rowan Close however this needs to be demonstrated through highway assessment work and is likely to cause as much controversy and opposition as the current Rothwell North proposals..."

An objection letter, signed by residents and town and unitary councillors to North Northants Council, said: “A full and detailed transport assessment should be submitted by the applicant and fully scrutinised by the local highway authority to ensure that the access is safe and that Rowan Close is suitable for this amount of development – any reasonable person would conclude that it isn’t.”

Members of Desborough Town Council have voiced their extreme concerns about the proposed access that would see access via Rowan Close and nearby Wood Avens Way.

They sent in their objections to the proposed access including one saying Rowan Close is ‘too narrow especially for buses and other public service vehicles, with insufficient off-street parking.”

Desborough Town Council would prefer to see vehicular access to the development site from Stoke Road (B669) and also from Back Lane (between Stoke Road and Pipewell Road).

Over 60 letters have been received in objection as well as a 150-signature petition.

A document prepared for the North Northants Council Strategic Planning Committee sets out North Northants Council’s timeline of events saying that proposed access points were identified, and approved in April 2016, as Stoke Road, Rowan Close, Ironwood Avenue and Wood Avens Way (for a limited number of dwellings). The submission was assessed by the Local Highways Authority and was found to be ‘acceptable’.

In 2017 a Section 73 permission (of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that allows applications to be made for permission to develop without complying with a condition(s) previously imposed on a planning permission) required the development and subsequent reserved matters to accord with the ‘approved transport assessment’.

The document before councillors says: “This approved the principle of the access points and this cannot be revisited through this reserved matters application. Bellway Homes have confirmed that they control all the access points.

“The Local Highways Authority have raised no objection. It should be noted that any offsite works will be dealt with by condition 10 of the 2017 Section 73 approval.”

Father-of-two Mr Peleszok will be speaking at the meeting to implore councillors to act.

He added: “When we bought our house we were told that it was a through route for pedestrians only. Now there will be a school just down the road and it will be gridlock.

"There’s no parking provision outside and although I would hope that people will walk to school, we know what people are like.

”I feel powerless. It got ticked through on the nod and people's lives will be changed forever.”

See the full planning application (NK/2021/0356) for the 700 homes by going to North Northants Council planning portal at https://www.kettering.gov.uk/planningApplication/130776.

The meeting is due to take place on Monday, August 22, at 7pm in the Council Chamber, at the Council Offices, Swanspool House in Doddington Road, Wellingborough, Northants, NN8 1BP