Concern over further 44 homes at the end of Union Lane, Ulverston

There seems to be a flurry of activity to stop the above as the deadline of 5th September approaches.
Not made easy by last minute changes in the web address- now corrected).However in planning law, as I understand it, people have only one line of strong defence - traffic - (now: there were more previously).

The time that we did in fact try to achieve an informed decision, it was at the original planning meeting of SLDC when 'Hoad View', as it is now called, was applied for on behalf of Persimmons. At that time it was clear from the plans that there was a road leading through the land relevant to this application, to land beyond so that what we were considering was not just the building of 27 houses but what now turns out to be a further 44 houses in the field beyond, making over 70 houses in all.

Sadly the planning system is such that we were unable to make a good case because there were so many different issues and so few of us able to travel to Kendal to put them. With only three minutes each and a dis-coordinated approach, we were never given enough time to present the issues before the members of the planning committee that would be making the decision.

The main argument against all of this development was the access by road. There were two possibilities at the time : via Union Lane or round the back via Mowings lane.

The Union Lane access was both very narrow and was approached via a blind corner. On the first count, the proposal made by the developer was to widen the lane which required demolishing an old and significant wall - as long as the wall could be demolished then this solution was acceptable to the Cumbria Highways Authority on the issue of wideness of the lane.

To deal with the blind corner the developers drew up lots of plans showing how larger trucks and lorries could get round the corner whilst facing oncoming traffic approaching downhill at speed. From the care and detailed nature of these plans it would appear to the questioning mind that the developer was having a hard time to be convincing. All the councillors had these explanations were left these explanations in their pigeon holes before the meeting so that we expected a good debate on safety to ensue. In practise no examination of these plans resulted - not one of the councillors even opened these documents: the comment from one of them to another was "What are these?". With Kate Lawson, the planning officer surprising us all with a statement that the Cumbria Highways found no fault in the proposed road design: all discussion was killed off instantly

As is now history, this plan was passed, not without Cllr Maureen Nicholson stating afterwards "Sorry Geoff we felt we had to pass it as we believed the developers would have appealed and SLDC wouldn't have had the funds to fight them at the appeal court." Such is the way of the muscle men these days.

People with a suspicious mind could perhaps wonder whether the views of Cumbria Highways were impartial. Consider how much money was at stake for Persimmons - a potential of 70 houses at an average of around £200,000 ie 14 million pounds. Thus the view of Cumbria County Council Highways department as to the safety of this corner was crucial yet no discussion or alternate views to this decision to the safety of this corner were considered by the planning committee councillors.

I find it strange that a Cumbria County Highways Officer had previous drawn attention to the dangers of this intersection (Union Lane and Stanley Street) in a letter to the SLDC planning department at the time of opening up access to Taylor Court opposite Union Lane. At the latter's planning meeting the SLDC officer chose to disregard the Cumbria Highways advice.

As people now know Cumbria County Highways have a very poor history in enforcing the law in the question of ensuring the contractors doing adequate repairs when back filling the replaced the cobbles down Market Street. Had this law been enforced then no repairs would ever have been needed to the Market Street Cobbles and no cost to the tax payer or disruption to the town trading need to have resulted.

Don't these incidents lead the rational thinker to believe that the Cumbria Highways Department is not to be trusted?

So what can be done? The issue of road safety of the proposal to develop the further 44 homes has never been considered properly. In my view it doesn't lie in any of the points raised in the unsigned sheet of A4 paper that has just been slipped quietly under my door - presumably written by some shadowy people from another part of our area. (This whole story is developing into a who dunnit worthy of Poirot). The grounds for stopping the allocation of this land to building are in my view dependent on focusing on the traffic patterns that have never ever been considered by the public - only by the unreliable CCC Highways Department. There is no point continuing to repeat arguments already defeated at the first application.

The most impressive argument that I can think of is access ie the blind corner from Stanley St to Union Lane. This will come up again in the future when planning application for the further plot for 44 houses is put forward. As a mathematician I know that the probability of an accident on a blind corner goes up exponentially as the traffic increases. Thus at some point the probabilities of an accident must reach a high enough level that even Cumbria Highways consider it is unacceptable. The only change that would alter that is a change in the design of the junction which could be brought about by demolishing the house on the corner of Stanley Street so as to enable the creation of a mini roundabout.

There is also another important traffic issue that appears to have been forgotten about: the access to this whole area via the exceedingly narrow Mill Street from the one way system.

First, Mill Street is extremely narrow allowing only travel one direction at a time with no pavement for pedestrians on one side. At the same time large beer delivery trucks for the Kings Arms obstruct visibility and movement.
Secondly, many people have had very near misses from vehicles cutting the corner at speed from Soutergate with no sight of the vehicles emerging from Mill Street.

It was this very issue that raised questions as to the suitability of the proposed location for the Health Centre with the large traffic coming to it via Mill St and The Gill. Now with the possibility of 70 new houses ie and 140 fresh cars to park on the proposed land, this far exceeds the 80 odd cars already parked at the Health Centre.

With the whole issue of dramatically increased traffic in the area we have the potential of an accident nightmare. Surely a thorough traffic survey of dog (being walked up Gill Banks), pedestrian, cycles cars, lorries both delivery and servicing, and finally buses to the Health Centre needs to be carried out by CCC Highways before any long term decisions are made.

Comments please on my logic. Does this make sense to you?

If so where do we focus  the public's limited resources to achieve the result we want? - A safe living environment rather than another Persimmons' housing fiasco (remember North Lonsdale road A590 junction).

Let's start by writing now- before September 5th to preserve sanity.

Here's where on the SLDC website: http://applications.southlakeland.gov.uk/ldfconsultation/login.aspx reference MM072U,