A national housebuilder has been advised to 'take your tanks off our lawn' by a resident at an important planning hearing this week.  

Monica Stark, who founded Oakham South Action Group eight years ago to oppose plans to develop land off Brooke Road, told Taylor Wimpey that they are not welcome in the area. 

She was making representations to the Government planning inspector Katie Child on day four of a two-week examination of Rutland's masterplan for housing and development over the next two decades.



Rutland County Council submitted its local plan to the Government in February and if the planning inspector thinks it is legally sound and meets planning rules it will be approved. 

Tuesday 16 September was focused on housing sites and how and why the authority decided to allocate certain areas for development while discounting others. 

Throughout the hearing at the council's headquarters in Oakham around the table have been a number of planning consultants and lawyers representing various national housebuilders and smaller local developers who are arguing their client's proposed sites should be allocated in the plan.  

An allocation in the masterplan makes it easier to receive planning permission. 

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The site off Brooke Road in Oakham has not been allocated for housing and Monica Stark argued it should stay that way.  

She said the area, which is close to a level crossing, already has significant traffic issues and two children have been knocked down in recent years, one having to be airlifted to hospital. 

She told the legal representative for Taylor Wimpey, who was also at the table: 

"After 17 years of the community rejecting this site, it is time to draw a line under this now and accept that Taylor Wimpey need to take their tanks off our lawn, cut their losses and chose a site where the traffic can flow. 

"It would finally lift the trauma of the community, of thinking that our roads will be more impacted and the unique character destroyed." 

Last year the house builder held an exhibition about their plans to build 165 homes on the site. 

Oakham resident Mark Hallam was also at the meeting and asked questions about the proposal to build 94 homes on land south of Stamford Road. The site has been allocated in council's local plan for housing. 

He said it was 'absurd' to build that many homes on the plot and questioned the revised permitted distance of the homes to the sewage works, which has changed from 400 to 250 metres. 

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He told the hearing that on a sunny day with an easterly wind, residents could smell the sewage. 

The largest site in the local plan for allocation is Quarry Farm, which sits close to the Stamford border and is due to have 650 homes built on it. 

The authority's planning committee approved the planning application from Allison Homes in January, and together with Stamford North, an adjoining and larger development across the border in Lincolnshire, it will form a vast extension to Stamford. 

At the hearing, resident Dr John Deag questioned the traffic modelling reports for the scheme and also wanted to know more about the 106 planning agreement, which sets out what community assets the developer will pay for. 

The agent for the development said it was yet unknown how the country park would be managed and how that management would be paid for.  

The role of the inspector is to test the plan and then to write a report outlining whether she decides it is legally sound. 

The hearing continues until Thursday and there will be a further day's hearing in November.