Application 96490 – Former Webbs Factory Site, Bridge Road

Society members will be aware that the redevelopment of the riverside site known as “Former Webbs factory site Bridge Road” has been in contention ever since the factory was closed.   In 2004 Paxton Holdings obtained planning consent for a tall, dense development, linked to the town by a bridge over the railway.   The plans were strongly opposed by the town's residents, with the Society in the lead.   Paxtons then sold the site to Redrow Homes, but the change in national economic circumstances forestalled construction above ground level.   Meanwhile, Redrow's asset has lost substantial value while making no return, increasing the pressure on them to find an acceptable way out.

The 2004 plan found no support in the town, and to their credit (and considerable expense) Redrow have returned to it to seek something more acceptable to local opinion.   The result is the current application, 96490, which can be be seen HERE: 

The scale of what is proposed is difficult to visualise.   300+ tiny new flats, none above a modest 3 bedrooms in size and crammed on to a site not greatly bigger than Grove Gardens or the churchyard, is unprecedented even by the standards of recent years.   The resulting anonymous blocks towering over the town, the river and the National Park and in a style seen nowhere else in the Forest, would add significantly to the town's population.   Unsupported by any additional infrastructure and without a single private garden, they would also bring many more cars to the town's roads at a well-known choke point.   And while the proposed affordable housing units would be welcome, the appeal of the 200 small flats for market sale would clearly lie in the direction of second home owners rather than of permanent residents raising families.

Redrow have put much thought and effort into the new scheme and have been good enough to seek the participation of the Society throughout.   Their first proposal was based on stark four-storey blocks with flat roofs, and was emphatically rejected by the public and the planners in a consultation last August.   Redrow responded by  modifying the designs, adding pitched roofs and partial timber cladding of the walls.   The result can be seen to reflect contemporary waterside “village” design elsewhere but in your Committee's view its height, style and density conflict starkly with the nature of our Forest location, being discordant both with the surrounding area of Lymington and with the old town itself.   Its additional height (four storeys, plus steep pitched roofs, plus the equivalent of an additional storey in raised flood datum base height) will dominate the town even more than the earlier, Paxton proposal, and it would  also have a significant adverse impact on the important view of Lymington across the river from Walhampton in the newly created National Park.

Redrow have hinted that if this application is refused they will instead build the Paxton plan given consent in 2004.   But the increased minimum datum height for building on flood plains imposed since that consent was granted would require a fresh application to vary its terms, particularly as to height.   Opinions differ, but it is by no means clear that such an application would succeed.

Your Committee has considered these and other factors against the planning tests set by the Core Strategy and the emerging concept of Local Distinctiveness.   The principal test set by the former resides in Policy CS2 (Design quality):

New development will be required to be well designed to respect the character, identity, and context of the area’s towns, villages and countryside.   All new development will be required to contribute positively to local distinctiveness and sense of place, being appropriate and sympathetic to its setting in terms of scale,

height, density, layout, appearance, materials, and its relationship to adjoining buildings and landscape features, and shall not cause unacceptable effects by reason of visual intrusion, overlooking, shading, noise, light pollution or other adverse impact on local character and amenities.

We believe that the proposals set out in Application 96940 comprehensively fail this test and that accordingly we should oppose it on behalf of the Society.   We urge fellow members to do the same individually, using the link reproduced above