Issue - meetings

Mixed use tourist and residential development of retirement living lodges with an ancillary social hub, detached farmstead houses, and holiday lodges along with separate communal buildings providing dining, leisure and recreation facilities and ancillary activity uses such as glamping, a multi-use games area, events space and nature play areas with associated infrastructure works.

The Chairman of the Committee exercised her prerogative and changed the order in which the agenda items would be considered. The Chairman decided to take report A.2 first due to the number of attendees present in the public gallery who were interested in this application.

The Committee heard that the application had been referred to the Planning Committee because of a ‘call-in’ by Councillor Chapman BEM. The application site was situated on the north-eastern edge of Brightlingsea on land to the north of Robinson Road. The site comprised approximately 81 acres of former gravel workings which had established a low-level restoration profile. The site had been left to self-seed, which had created areas of open scrub, grassland and woodland around three former silt lagoons, which had formed five open lakes. The site was located outside of, but directly to the north of, the defined settlement boundary for Brightlingsea.

It was reported that full planning permission was now sought for: “A mixed-use tourist and residential development of retirement living lodges with an ancillary social hub, detached farmstead houses, and holiday lodges along with separate communal buildings providing dining, leisure and recreation facilities and ancillary activity uses such as glamping, a multi-use games area, events space and nature play areas with associated infrastructure works”. The site benefited from an implemented full planning consent (ref: 19/00188/FUL) for ‘the development of a mixed-use tourist and residential scheme comprising of retirement living apartments, detached farmhouses and holiday houses lodges with ancillary facilities such as glamping pods, toilet facilities, a club house/hub, children's play areas and boating jetties’. That application had been submitted in February 2019 and had been granted full planning permission in March 2021.

Members were told that this application sought significant revisions to the previously approved scheme in order to propose a more contemporary, consistent and sustainable approach to the design of the various buildings located throughout the site. The quantum of accommodation remained as previously approved (i.e. 104 holiday lodges, 36 retirement units and 5 market dwellings), but the size, mix and arrangement of the various units of accommodation had been revised. The development now also proposed a wider range of tourism and leisure facilities predominantly at the western end of the site and revised retirement accommodation from the previously approved retirement apartments to individual retirement lodges supplemented by a communal retirement hub.

The Committee also heard that, whilst the revisions included an increase to the overall footprint of the development (approximately a 51% increase), they also provided for substantial enhancements over and above the approved scheme in terms of an improved tourism offer through more on-site facilities, ecological benefits via lake and reedbed creation and an enhanced and consistent design approach across the whole development, which incorporated improved sustainability credentials.

Members were informed that, when considered against the backdrop of the existing implemented consent, the proposed development would not result in adverse impact upon residential amenity, highway safety, landscape impacts or ecological interests. Moreover, the submitted Environmental Impact Assessment had  ...  view the full minutes text for item 26