Over 50 homes are planned for the ‘Topsham Gap’ after planners agreed they would be out of sight. Heritage Developments will build 54 houses on the former Topsham Golf Academy driving range off Exeter Road, having previously developed nearby Berkeley Park.
More than 50 houses are to be built in the ‘Topsham Gap’ after planners heard the much-needed homes would be hidden from view.
The 54 houses on the old Topsham Golf Academy driving range off Exeter Road will be built by Heritage Developments, which has already built homes at Berkeley Park next door.
Members of Exeter City council’s planning committee heard that the new development will be effectively screened by the existing one.
The scheme has been adjusted in response to earlier concerns, and Cllr Andy Ketchin (Green, Newtown and St Leonards) said it was a model of how developers and planning officers could work together.
“I like it,” he said. “I think it’s a good template of how it should be done. I think the officer has done a cracking job moving from the first design to the second, but the first wasn’t too shoddy anyway!”
Heritage Developments director Andy Martinovic said he was pleased to have been able to produce a scheme that was recommended for approval.
Conditions on the development include managing open spaces and providing a children’s play area. The homes will be a mix of detached, semi-detached and terraced homes of two and two-and-a-half storeys.
Nineteen of them will be ‘affordable’.
A number of councillors raised the issue of building in the ‘Topsham Gap’, the open space between the town of Topsham and the city, which Cllr Gemma Rolstone (Lab, Topsham) said was important to many residents.
Officers said there had been a number of planning applications for building in the ‘gap’ down the years, some of which the council had refused only to lose on appeal.
They pointed out that the current proposal could not be seen as it was effectively already surrounded by housing.
Cllr Rolstone also questioned how much developers gave to local NHS services as one of the conditions imposed by the planning authority. In this case the contribution will be £35,232.
Members were told that the figure was set by bodies such as the NHS according to a formula.
“Is any consideration given to the strain on services within Topsham as it is?” asked Cllr Rolstone. “There is no NHS dentist in the whole of the ward and the two surgeries are both at capacity. There is no more room to grow.
“I don’t know which development is going to get landed with having to build a new doctors’ surgery – maybe they’re all playing Russian roulette with each other.”
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