New Lutterworth estate plan would bring new allotments

The plans include 7.7 acres set aside for community allotments for the town. The allotment plan could solve a problem in Lutterworth.

Cash-strapped Harborough District Council wants to sell the more central De Verdon Road allotments to a housing developer by the end of 2017.

The new allotments could potentially replace the De Verdon Road ones - and the new site is actually much bigger, the Mail understands.

The new allotments would be less than a mile away from the DeVerdon Road site.

Dave Beaumont, chairman of Lutterworth Allotments Association, who has been campaigning to keep the De Verdon Road allotments for years, welcomed the latest development.

“We’ve tried to hold on to De Verdon Road, I’ve personally battled for eight years, but we’ve been told that the site WILL be sold by the council” said Mr Beaumont.

“We basically got a two-year extension to find and develop a new site.

“I’ve seen this solution on the Mulberry Development plans, and I think it’s a good idea - it could be a lot worse.

“I’m just waiting to see what people will think of the houses. People might not be too happy about the town extending that far west.”

James Meakin, a Lutterworth school student aged 15, also led an on-line campaign to preserve the allotments site.

He has attracted more than 1,300 signatures to his petition to save the allotments.

“I believe the allotments should stay,” James told the Mail.

And his mother Sheila Meakin said this week that James would “definitely” continue with his campaign despite the new allotments plan.

“The new development is not a solution, and anyway it has still to be approved by Lutterworth Town Council and Harborough District Council” she said. “James will still be fighting for his petition.”

She added that one complication is that the proposed allotment, west of the River Swift, is in the Bitteswell parish, rather than Lutterworth.

The outline planning application from Mulberry Developments Ltd calls for the big new estate to be built in an edge-of-town location on 46 acres of land west of Coventry Road, north of the A4303 and south of Lutterworth Country Park.

The site would be accessed from a new four-arm roundabout that will replace the existing Coventry Road/Brookfield Way junction.

The development would include one, two, three and four-bedroom houses, including affordable housing, the developers say. The homes would be a maximum of two storeys throughout.

Two Public Rights of Way pass through the site, connecting Lutterworth to Bitteswell and Magna Park.

The proposed estate would add to the rapid growth of Lutterworth in recent years.

In just 10 years, between the census of 2001 and the census of 2011, the town had a population increase of almost 13 per cent.