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 Thursday, March 20, 2008

SAME OLD TRICKS, SAME OLD DEVELOPER

17 November 2005 was a memorable day for Lytham. Following months of popular unrest, Kensington Developments withdrew the planning application for their original Lytham Quays conception.  Defend Lytham was at the forefront of the campaign that brought this about but, far from becoming self-congratulatory and complacent, we have remained vigilant on behalf of the town ever since. Our concerns were heightened by the rather contemptuous adoption by the developer of the Lytham Quays epithet for the original Cooksons/Sadlers site for which planning consent was granted in 2006.  It would appear that the trepidation was justified. Kensington have now embarked on the same painstaking and deliberately confusing exercise that witnessed Cypress Point metamorphose from an approved development with 420 dwellings to one that ultimately contained more than 700.

The Cooksons/Sadlers site already looks nothing like the plans that were passed in May 2006.  While the streets seem much narrower than portrayed originally, most striking of all is the absence of virtually all of the open and play spaces promised in the planning application.  It appears that the developer is claiming that land outside the consented site boundary – some of which is publicly owned – is more than adequate compensation for this.  In short, the aim is to encroach on the foreshore. This must not be tolerated.

Sleight of hand aside, three additional planning applications have now been lodged with Fylde Borough Council for alterations to the consented Cooksons/Sadlers scheme and these are assuredly only the first of many that are in the pipeline. We as a community must resist these if we are not to allow our beloved town to degenerate into little more than a developers’ playground.  This we owe not just to ourselves, but also to future generations.

Application 07/1049 is the most threatening of the three and is the one on which we focus here. It is really two applications dressed as one and requests permission for the erection of 24 extra care units, plus manager’s accommodation, and of 15 standard apartments.  The first of these is proposed for land that was mostly supposed to form the landscaped entry to the development at the junction of Warton Street and East Beach. If allowed to go ahead, the building will dominate the vista from both of those roads. Not only that, the developer asserts in justification for its application that there is a shortage of such accommodation in Fylde. However, the very same company was granted permission in November 2006 to erect 90 such units as part of its development of the former Aegon site on Ballam Road. To date, not a brick has been laid.

The second part of the proposal is for the construction of a block of 15 apartments to replace two previously consented villas overlooking the river.  Such substitutions were one of the principal devices used to expand the overall size of Cypress Point. It may seem fairly innocuous in this case, but please bear two facts in mind. First, the current local plan 2006-2016 identifies the need for just one new dwelling over that period and this application alone is for an additional 34. Second, there are 14 further similarly situated villas on the Cooksons/Sadlers site on which work is yet to start. Surely, we do not want our town to become the northern equivalent of Milton Keynes.  What is more, we do not have the infrastructure – education, health services, roads etc. – to cope.  The new traffic lights at the Warton Street-East Beach junction will cause chaos even if no-one were to move onto the new development.  Just imagine what it will be like if we get somewhere near the additional 2734 dwellings proposed under the original Lytham Quays design statement.

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