“Posh” Derbyshire villages being protected from development, Government inspector told

The claim was made during an inspector-led public hearing into Erewash Borough Council’s core strategy – a blueprint for development up until 2037.

The hearing was told how plans for 1,000 homes and a bypass would be built as a south-west extension to Kirk Hallam, encompassing the Pioneer Meadows nature reserve.

The plans would include a primary school and a local centre with shop units and a large supermarket, along with tunnels underneath the new bypass aimed at allowing wildlife to continue to travel around the area safely. It would also see 66 acres of land added to the Green Belt, as a form of compensation for development in the protected countryside.

However, the hearing was told that the land which the council intended to add to the Green Belt was not in the ownership of the developers aiming to build 1,000 homes and the relief road, so was not in its gift to use as compensation, with allegedly no talks held over redesignated their land.

Government inspector Kelly Ford was told the bypass would be funded partly from the building of 1,000 homes but also from other housing developments.

She was told that the original plan for 1,300 homes had been reduced due to site constraints, including “abnormal” land conditions which would cost £16.75 million to alter.

Andrew Johnson, a senior planner for the borough council, told the hearing that a planning application for the development was at an “advanced” stage and was pending the outcome of the inspector’s report.

He said: “The gap between Kirk Hallam and Ockbrook would reduce but would not merge. It would encroach into the countryside but this is unavoidable in an edge-of-settlement development.

“We do not feel it significantly undermines the Green Belt. This proposes a significant urban extension and will improve access to the Green Belt.”

He said the scheme would provide 10 per cent affordable housing, saying this would allow “headroom” for unexpected costs, with “viability around Ilkeston a bit tougher to achieve”.

Chris Waumsley, on behalf of Inovo Consulting – representing the landowners, said there were three landowners involved with the development, with the preferred developer being Barratt and David Wilson Homes.

Mr Waumsley said a planning application would be submitted “pretty much simultaneously” with the inspector’s report concluding her decisions on the core strategy, with an aim to have 40 homes built in 2026.

He said the first phase of the scheme would involve 300 homes and the relief road, with the development to be built from opposite ends towards the middle.

Gary Woodhouse, on behalf of the campaign group Kirk Hallam Green Squeeze, which has more than 700 members, said the Kirk Hallam population has been decreasing while the population of Draycott has increased, but is not seeing further development.

Mr Woodhouse said 77 per cent of housing in the core strategy was being planned in the Ilkeston area, saying: “Surely it is more viable to build in the south where the property value is higher and higher viability for affordable housing.

“The development will increase footfall of people and pets, displacing nature that avoids humans at all costs. At the moment they are free to roam and they have full access to the Green Belt and now you are basically trapping them in. All wildlife will be decimated by this. Let’s not turn the site into a gross injustice by building this monstrosity.”

Jon Watkin, a resident, said: “They say the road will be a nice hard boundary for the Green Belt but I think that is absolute rubbish. I think it is an opportunity to build in the Green Belt and developers will think ‘oh great all the infrastructure is there already’.”

John Frudd, a former long-serving borough councillor for the Ilkeston area, indicated that plans for 300 homes in Borrowash, 1,000 homes on the West Hallam depot and 1,000 at Maywood Golf Club were all discounted by the council because they would encroach into the countryside.

Mr Frudd said: “In Kirk Hallam it is the same story. This is contradictory. It is not acceptable there but it is OK for Kirk Hallam. It is political because the previous administration see Kirk Hallam as a bit of a working-class area, with not a lot of professionals and these other places are a little bit posher, I suppose.

“It is discriminatory in terms of where housing is being proposed. We can’t build here because it is nice and posh and we can build here because it isn’t nice and posh. How can that be right?”

A council consultant told the hearing: “We are in the East Midlands, not in the south of London, so delivery of affordable housing is always a question of viability.”