Fears raised over 'wrecking ball' 475-home plan for Broughton Astley

There are also fears about the location of the 475-home plan in what has been called a “flood prone” part of the village.

Hollie Jinks raised the concerns over the plans for hundreds more homes in the Harborough district village which feature in the outlined Harborough District Council (HDC) Local Plan.

Ms Jinks, who lives in the village’s Glebe Road, called the proposal a “wrecking ball development” for Broughton Astley and feared the worst.

She said: “I cannot stress enough how much this particular proposal will impact negatively on village life and with no guarantees that flooding won’t be made much worse”.

The Harborough Draft Local Plan takes into account the district’s requirement to build 657 homes per year between 2020 and 2036, and 534 homes per year between 2036 and 2041. The proposals map out ‘key development sites’ across the district, including the 475 homes for Broughton Astley.

However, Ms Jinks is worried about the scheme. She said the village’s Frolesworth Road in particular had been prone to flooding over a number of years and believed additional houses “can often aggravate flooding situations and make them a lot worse”.

She said that Frolesworth Road had been flooding “for at least two or three years” and it was so commonplace now that people who live on a section of the road go out and stop the traffic from coming through “because when the traffic goes through, it pushes water into their houses”.

She added: “[When it floods] we can’t get out of the estate to go to work or wherever in our cars, [because neighbours stop the traffic to protect their homes] so we have to put our wellies on and walk through the water. And where they’re thinking of building this estate is not too far from Frolesworth Road from where this is already happening.”

The district council says the Local Plan must be introduced, with the spokesperson saying: “If the council does not prepare a new Local Plan now, it will need to plan for an additional 2,000 homes than is currently the case because the government has increased national housing targets and at a further cost estimated at over £2 million”.

However, alongside the flooding issues, Ms Jinks said she also had concerns about additional traffic the proposed development would cause in the area, claiming they were “already experiencing fairly regular accidents occurring at the crossroads” which sit just off Frolesworth Road and onto nearby Jubilee Road.

She also claimed the development will impact the character of the area, adding “the development is going to go all the way from the back gardens of people who live on Glebe Road, all the way to Broughton Astley Cemetery”. She also feared it will “change the dynamics of the Frolesworth Road recreation area, the cemetery and the Orchard Primary School playground”.

A spokesperson for HDC could not directly address Ms Jinks’ claims, but said the consultation was open for people to have their say. They said: “Harborough District Council has recently approved the Draft Local Plan for consultation. The consultation period runs for another six weeks […] and we are actively seeking feedback from parishes and residents. All feedback is welcomed and will be looked at by officers and councillors. It should be noted that the council has not made a decision to submit the plan to government at this point.

“Each site allocation in the draft local plan has been assessed in detail against technical criteria and constraints, including flood risk, ecology, biodiversity, transport, highways, education and health services. Therefore, infrastructure has been considered as part of the site selection process.

“The principle of development on each of the allocated sites will be accepted at that stage but all sites will still need planning permission. Any planning application would need to demonstrate that the scheme is in accordance with the various policy requirements set out for each individual site within the local plan, as well as national planning policy.”

The Draft Local Plan consultation will run until 9am on Tuesday, May 6, with people able to find the consultation on the HDC website by searching ‘Consultations’, ‘Planning Policy Consultations’.