A planning application to build 194 houses in Penrith on land to the North of the town will be decided 30miles away in Kendal next week with no Penrith councillors able to vote in the Westmorland and Furness Council strategic planning committee meeting.

The meeting will take place on Wednesday at County hall in Kendal and with planning officers recommending that the application to build 194 houses comprises of a range of 2, 3 and 4 bedroom properties on land located between Inglewood Road and Centurion Rise in Penrith by Storey Homes be approved.

The application has drawn objection from residents and Penrith Town Council. With some challenge the site is agricultural land and not included in the local plan for development.

A spokes person for the town council today said “'Penrith Town Council as a consultee considered planning application 22/0256 at its meeting on the 08 January 2024 and returned a response objecting to the application”

The town council grounds for its objection submitted to Westmorland and Furness Council include concerns about highways access to the development and “that it is wrong not to future proof the town by building another educational facility, something a masterplan would hopefully address. As well as this, there are serious pressures on our health services with the Doctors being at capacity and people finding they are unable to get appointments and the nearest dentist taking on patients being at Hexham.”

Local residents also raised objections about the development including like the town council concerns about insufficient local facilities including schools, medical centres, jobs, shops or leisure centres to accommodate the development.

Others raised concerns over loosing land that is “currently good quality grazing” land that will be lost.

The developer has also made a case to reduce the number of affordable homes on the site from 30% 58 properties to just 12% 24 properties with the mix of dwellings being proposed as 4 properties as affordable rent and 20 as discounted sale properties at 70% of open market value 5 of those designated as First Homes.

The Local plan created by the former Eden Council sets out that the planning authority seeks the provision of 30% affordable housing on developments unless it can be demonstrated in a viability assessment that the development would be unviable.

Despite the further increase in housing the council as the local education authority has said it requires no financial contribution towards primary school education provision “as there are sufficient places available within the joint catchment schools of Beaconside Primary, Brunswick Infant and North Lakes Junior to accommodate the primary age pupil yield from this development an education contribution would not be required for primary provision.”

However, the secondary catchment school, Ullswater Community College, which is the only non-private secondary provision in the town, is already oversubscribed and therefore, cannot readily accommodate any further pupils. The next nearest secondary school to is Appleby Grammar, although this has spaces the council have said it is in excess of the walking threshold so is deemed to be inappropriate in meeting needs for children who would live at the new development in Penrith.

To enable future provision in Penrith to meet anticipate the need arising from the development the council will require as part of a planning agreement an education contribution amount of £883,944, which is calculated on the 194 houses resulting in an additional 36 secondary school spaces arising from the development.

The development like all new housing developments in the Penrith and Eden area is subject to nutrient neutrality rules that require developers that create new houses to offset the nutrient impact on the local river catchment.

The Penrith development plans to use mitigation land is located at Matterdale, approximately 11 miles to the south west of Penrith that currently comprises an area of open grazing land. The proposal is to remove this land from grazing and allow it to go to  fallow use.

The council has also said that the applicant has indicated that a smaller site a small parcel of land which fronts Green Lane to the north east of the development will come forward as part of a separate application at a later date making use of the remaining identified capacity of 56 dwellings.

Planning officers will recommend to councillors on the strategic planning committee at the meeting on Wednesday in Kendal, that planning permission be granted subject to a Section 106 agreement to secure 12% affordable housing, off site highway works, travel plan monitoring fee of £6,600 to enable monitoring of traffic in the area over a 5 year period, provision for the offsite nutrient neutrality mitigation strategy at Matterdale and the secondary education contribution of £883,944.