Redrow Chester residents demand increased consultation period
Abstract: Residents near Redrow Homes have requested an extension to the standard three-week consultation period for a proposed 1,400 home housing scheme on Wrexham Road in Chester. Westminster Park Residents' Association is concerned that members of the public will not have long enough to consider the large-scale plans.

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Residents neighbouring a proposed Chester housing estate are shocked at being given just three weeks to consider the complex planning application.

Plans have just been lodged for the first phase of a massive housing scheme for up to 1,400 homes on fields alongside Wrexham Road on the southern edge of the city.

Redrow Homes has submitted details to Cheshire West and Chester Council for 509 homes and associated infrastructure including a shopping centre with supermarket, restaurant and pub plus a health centre, nursery and primary school with playing fields.

But Westminster Park Residents’ Association (WPRA) is concerned members of the public will only be able to consider and comment on the plans during the standard three week consultation period despite the huge scale and scope of the application.

WPRA spokesman Brian Westcott said: “These plans contain a vast amount of information which must be carefully examined.

"We are astonished that the council have put a standard consultation expiry date of three weeks on these plans, finishing on 11 July 2017. It is clearly going to take more like three months to give these plans the attention that they deserve.”

Redrow and Taylor Wimpey will deliver the majority of the homes through a company called Paycause Ltd with three linked planning applications to include the rest of the housing, more detailed plans for the infrastructure and an ecological area where great crested newts, a protected species, can be relocated.

Mr Westcott added: “The plans have been promised by the developers Paycause for over a year and a half and responding in such a tight timescale is totally unacceptable. We hope that the council will reconsider.”

Redrow and Taylor Wimpey previously held pre-application consultations alongside a council exercise with the stated aim of involving the community in shaping the plans from an early stage.

There are major concerns around whether the infrastructure, Wrexham Road in particular, will cope with the extra activity in the area.