PLANS for nearly 180 houses in Sutton Benger get rejected by Wiltshire Council. 

Developers Land Allocation Ltd had its plans to build 178 houses on land to the east of Church View thwarted.

When considering the plans officers looked at the considerable opposition to the scheme from not only the parish council but hundreds of residents. 

In total 237 representations against Land Allocation’s plans were received by the council’s planning team. 

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Chief among concerns were schools places, traffic increases, lack of amenities, sustainability and flood risks. 

In their report, officers wrote: “Sutton Benger has already experienced a high level of growth. The primary school is already expanding to cater for existing permitted development. It is on a small site and is unlikely to be suitable for expansion. 

“This will contribute to the need for a significant amount of out commuting which is not a sustainable form of development.” 

In declining the bid, planning offices cited the scheme’s sitting outside of the settlement boundary, exceeding development scale as well as a lack of available school places. 

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They continued: “The proposal would result in the significant urbanisation of this rural site which would result in harm to the local character, appearance and visual amenity of the immediate locality. 

“It would also result in the loss of this rural gap on the edge of this rural village. This together with the scale, mass and density of the scheme, poor design of public areas, lack of space for appropriate landscaping of the built development would also result in a scheme that would fail to provide a high quality development in this prominent rural landscape due to the quantum of development proposed.”