Technical Evidence

As part of the preparation of the planning application a whole suite of technical reports will be undertaken to demonstrate the development’s likely impacts on:

local infrastructure such as roads, water supply and sewers; on the natural environment such as landscape and wildlife;  and the built environment such as archaeology and listed buildings.  This information along with the feedback gained from the public exhibition etc., will be used to develop our designs for the site, along with the adopted policies of the Local Plan and Weston Neighbourhood Plan, particularly those that seek to enhance and protect local amenity and character.

This work builds upon the work undertaken in respect of the earlier application and is ongoing, but once completed we will be able to submit our plans.  Some of the issues looked at include the following:

Highways & Parking

The earlier application considered the access arrangements for the site in detail, and we intend to keep to those earlier designs with a single access from the A40 serving the development.

Parking will be provided within each plot (off-street) as detailed on the plans and at or above the County Council’s parking standards and will include provision for secure cycle parking. Some of the smaller homes will have parking in the front of the house.

Homes will be provided with at least 2 parking spaces, with 4 bed properties and above having 3 or more parking/ garage spaces. In addition, visitor parking will provided throughout the site and these spaces will be provided on-street within laybys.

Consideration is being given to having some of the homes provided with office/workspace above the garages to help facilitate working from home. In addition, we may also provide the option of providing ancillary accommodation for older relatives or for grown up children, on some of the larger properties.

Drainage

Surface water attenuation will be provided in the form of a pond within the landscape buffer at the front of the site. It is likely this will be a wet pond in order to encourage wildlife.

Enquiries with Welsh Water indicate that the foul drainage system has capacity to accommodate the expected flows from the site and they have supplied details of where we can connect to their system.

In addition to the changes introduced by the Building Regulations (Part G), we are also looking at other ways in which we can conserve water usage within the proposed development to go beyond the level required by Part G. This will help reduce the foul water flows from the development as well as reducing the consumption of potable water.

It is acknowledged that the water consumption of houses has a significant impact on not only direct operational running costs (i.e., water consumption charges), but also indirectly through additional energy usage and the heating of water for domestic use.