A FRESH scheme for four affordable homes on the edge of Cardigan, to all be occupied by members of the same family, submitted after a previous “bonkers” scheme was refused last year, has been given a breathing space.
Sisters Ms Celyn, Sara and Carys Jukes in an application to Ceredigion County Council planners recommended for refusal at the July 9 development management committee, are seeking permission for four affordable discounted for sale dwellings, this time bungalows, at Drws Y Coed, Cae Morgan Road, with a fourth home for other sister Mandy Jones; three of the sisters currently living at Drws Y Coed with their parents.
Last August, a previous scheme for four £400,000 three and four-bed detached homes at the site by the same applicants was refused by county planners after members were told calling them ‘affordable’ was “bonkers”.
That application was recommended for refusal on grounds including it went against planning policy as it is in an open countryside location, the application “fails to demonstrate that the proposed occupiers of the dwellings are in real affordable housing need, with [the applicants’] search focusing on properties up to a value of £350k,” and “there is no real need for the proposed occupiers to live at the application site, and is rather a desire to live close to the family”.
Head of planning for Ceredigion Russell Hughes-Pickering raised serious concerns about the size and scale of the application, with houses proposed in the circa £400,000 range, describing them as “blatantly not affordable”.
“Anyone looking at the application and thinking they are affordable houses is bonkers, these are not affordable houses: the size of the properties, the size of the plots, the value of the houses; they are just not affordable.”
A supporting statement for the latest scheme, through agent Harries Planning Design Management, says: “Due to their personal and family ties to Caermorgan Road, it is such that they seek to build homes on the land to the rear of Drws Y Coed. This will provide independent living accommodation where they can settle and continue to live, work and raise a family within their local community.”
It says the proposed dwellings, reduced in size and design after the previous refusal, are “honest in their intentions, to provide long-term family homes which will be of an appropriate scale to serve their needs, whilst respecting the wider landscape context and neighbouring amenity levels”.
The latest scheme was again recommended for refusal, on the grounds the site lies in the open countryside, outside of an established settlement, where there is a general presumption against new residential development, the site falls significantly below the expected housing density as set out in policy, and it would have a significant adverse effect on the general landscape.
At the July meeting, agent Wyn Harries said the scheme had been amended to address issues for the previous refusal of the “bonkers application, as it came to be known,” adding: “We have changed the application and listened to what you have said.”
On the sticking point for refusal, he said: “Unfortunately we could not move the site,” adding: “we have dealt with three of the four reasons for the last refusal.”
He told members he had known the family for some 30 years; father Mark Jukes a chair of Cardigan Agricultural Show, a past chair of the Barley Saturday Stallion Show, who had a successful joinery business and now a successful storage units business in the town, with the children also having successful careers and local businesses.
Local member Cllr Sian Maehrlein called for the scheme’s approval, saying they were “local people who have lived in Cardigan all their lives,” a very close Welsh family and all of them running successful businesses.
“If the houses are agreed it’s going to free up other houses for other people that haven’t got the building space they have, it’s very important to accept this planning and let the family live locally together,” she added.
Cllr Maldwyn Lewis made a call for a site inspection panel visit to view the proposed location, backed by Cllr Gareth Lloyd, who said: “It falls down to the location, is it a settlement or not?”
Members overwhelmingly agreed to a site visit before any decision is made, the application returning to a future committee for a final decision.
