Major Hailsham housing development withdrawn amidst flooding and drainage concerns

On Thursday (January 26), Wealden District Council’s Planning Committee South had been due to consider a reserved matters application on plans to build 241 homes on land off of Ersham Road — a site which already has outline planning permission.

The scheme was due back after being considered by the planning committee in December, when it was deferred due to concerns surrounding flooding and drainage plans.

Between the two meetings, however, East Sussex County Council put forward new objections to the proposals, leading officers to change their recommendation from approval to refusal. In light of this, the developer withdrew their application.

Stacey Robins, the council’s head of planning and environmental services, said: “Just for the avoidance of any doubt, as we have seen some confusion about what that means [with] people of the view it just won’t be considered at this meeting. To be clear, that application has been fully and completely withdrawn, so is no more.

“Don’t think the site has gone away. I think the developer there is looking at the issues that were in play and we will probably get a subsequent [application]. But it will be a fresh reserved matters in the fullness of time.”

Mr Robins went on to confirm that all consultation would restart should a new application be received at a later date.

The county council (acting as lead local flood authority) had initially not objected to the proposals, as it considered that the developer’s plans would mitigate any flooding hazards, as long as appropriate conditions were put in place.

Even with these conditions, however, the county council had said the mitigated hazard would still pose a ‘risk to life of children’ in some flooding events, due to the location of a designated play area on the site.

With grave concerns around this possibility, Wealden’s planning committee opted to defer the scheme to seek further information when it considered the scheme in December.

For further information see application reference WD/2021/2678/MRM on the Wealden District Council website.