Council insists Grantham bridge must be built, but doubts remain over delivery
Pennine Way Bridge is to remain but officials are unconvinced it will actually be built
A developer will not be allowed to ditch plans for a new bridge – but officials remain unconvinced that it will ever be built and the firm will also now cough up £8 million less for the community.
After four and a half hours discussing the matter, members of South Kesteven District Council’s (SKDC) planning committee decided not to remove the requirement for Pennine Way bridge to be built at Poplar Farm in Grantham. Critics had said doing so would ‘betray’ residents and go back on a promise to the town.
But councillors have agreed to drastically reduce the final contributions which the applicants Norwich Hub Ltd and Buckminster Trust Estate have to make to the area.
The proportion of affordable housing has been reduced to 8% (below the authority’s 20% benchmark) and ‘section 106’ planning contributions have been reduced from £12.2 million to £4 million – although a requirement to build sports pitches remains.
Under the new arrangement, the obligation to build the bridge remains in place if the developer builds more than 750 homes.
Currently, 677 homes have been built on the site – below the threshold for the bridge to be built.
At a meeting on Thursday, May 14, many councillors spoke against the plans to remove the bridge and said it was a vital piece of infrastructure which had been promised to residents.
Coun Tim Harrsion (Independent – Grantham St Wulframs) said: “I speak today as a Grantham councillor who’s deeply concerned about what this decision means for our town and for public trust in the planning system.
“For over a decade, residents were told that Pennine Way Bridge formed part of the long-term infrastructure plan for Poplar Farm.
“The bridge was not an optional extra. It was written into the development itself.
“It was secured through a section 106 agreement, it had funding trigger points and formed part of the justification for allowing up to 1,800 homes at Poplar Farm.”
A statement was read out on behalf of Coun Ben Green (Reform UK – Isaac Newton) – who did not attend the meeting in person.
He said: “What is being presented as a technical change is, in reality, a fundamental shift in what was agreed.
“The development remains in full, the impacts remain in full, but the infrastructure that helped make it acceptable is being stripped away.
“That is the issue before us. Because once you remove infrastructure of this kind, you are no longer delivering the scheme that was approved.
“You are delivering a lesser version of it – one where the burdens on roads, on connectivity, and on the wider area remain, but the balancing mitigation has gone.
“People see this pattern very clearly now. They are told one thing at the point of approval, and then, once the principle is established, those commitments begin to fall away.”
After a lot of consideration, councillors decided not to remove the requirement to build the bridge.
Coun Penny Milnes (Independent – Loveden Heath), who was chairing the meeting said: “The point is that the bridge is still there as a possibility and I think that it is probably quite key for everybody in this room that we all want this bridge to be a possibility.
“What we don’t want is to remove it and have no potential going forward of any bridge being built.”
She added that it “wasn’t an easy decision” for the committee to make and it wasn’t “perfect” – but it does keep the principle of the bridge being built in place.
But Coun Helen Crawford (Conservative – Bourne West) highlighted that the developer could choose to build slightly less than the threshold, meaning that it still wouldn’t have to build the bridge.
She added: “Could I just point out that they could build 749 homes and then they don’t have to build a bridge.”