(Title Image: via Google Earth)
Tetlow King – on behalf of Mulberry Homes (the rebranded Paddle Homes) – has launched a pre-application consultation on a proposed residential development off Waunscil Avenue on the boundary between Bridgend town and Brackla.
While there isn’t yet a formal planning application, the outline proposals are for 70 homes, made up of 65 three-bedroom houses, 4 four-bedroom houses and 1 two-bedroom coach house. These would be accessed off Waunscil Avenue near the shop.
Similar to previous proposals, an equipped playground would be built near the Chorleywood allotments.
A walking and cycling route would connect the existing path behind Priory Oak and Gwaun Coed to the lane between the Brackla Meadows estate and Vernon Street/Charles Street. Bridgend Council’s active travel plans propose to eventually extend this towards Pendre and Wildmill.
The land is a former railway branch line that closed in the 1960s and the area around Waunscil Avenue was in-filled during the 1970s/1980s. Since the early 1990s, there’ve been several unsuccessful attempts to either remove the embankment (at the Vernon/Herbert Street end) or build on it.
The last planning application of this scale was submitted by Paddle Homes in 2010. It was almost identical to the one subject to the consultation and was rejected by both the council and the Planning Inspectorate (on appeal) due to arguments over site viability and affordable housing.
There are several complicating factors, particularly a sewer mains that runs the length of the site, the presence of landfill gases such as methane and the importance of the former railway as a green strip (even though it’s technically a brownfield site).
The attached ecological survey (pdf) notes the presence of Japanese knotweed in places. However, it also notes that parts of the site are an area of local importance for wildlife, particularly birds and slowworms.The consultation is open until Monday 12th April 2021 and all of the details are available here.
