Objections sparked by plan to open Shanly home scheme emergency access to residents

Shanly Homes has proposed some significant alterations to a 99-home scheme near Thames Hospice – including changes to the vehicle access.

In April, outline planning permission was officially granted for a joint application by Shanly Homes and Summerleaze for 99 homes on about four hectares of land south of Bray Lake.

It has been a long time coming – the plan was voted through grudgingly at a Maidenhead development management committee meeting in December 2023.

While waiting on a decision, the application received more than 120 objection letters from residents.

Now Shanly Homes has applied for a variation (ref 25/03312/VAR) asking for changes to the vehicular access arrangements and proposing to break the work into two phases.

It wants to phase the work because of the ‘extremely challenging nature of the residential market at present’, together with the size of the scheme, the developer said.

This will enable it to take ‘a precautionary approach’ to delivering the scheme in the current market – and will also split out payments for Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL).

This is a charge that councils place on new development to help pay for local infrastructure.

Shanly says that splitting this up means the project can start building work now, while keeping the costs and funding manageable over the lifetime of the project.

“The opportunity cost of having to pay the entire CIL liability on commencement is currently too great to enable us to start work on site,” wrote Shanly Homes in a letter to RBWM.

The other more controversial change is a proposal to alter the use of the previously consented emergency vehicular access (adjacent to the hospice) into a formal vehicular access for residents.

In its letter, Shanly Homes states: “A review of the consented scheme has highlighted that the main vehicular access into the site is likely to be busy, particularly during peak times.

The alteration will ‘alleviate this issue,’ the developer said.

But Holyport Residents Association (HRA), alongside a few residents, has lodged an objection.

HRA historically objected to the building of the Thames Hospice due to the increased traffic – and remains concerned principally with the traffic issue and associated safety.

Andrew Cormie, chair of HRA, wrote: “This proposal to also use the hospice entry would unfairly subject the residents, located opposite and near to [it] to further traffic.

“This would also have adverse effects upon the staff and visitors to Thames Hospice.”

He added: “It does not take a genius to tell that the entrance will be busy... and Shanly should have known at the time of the initial application.”

In the cover letter of its application, Shanly insists its research shows that opening access to residents ‘would have no adverse impact… in terms of capacity or safety’.

A Shanly Homes spokesperson said formalising the secondary access ‘will help distribute vehicle movements more efficiently’ and ‘better balance the effects on the wider highway network.’

“Safety and the needs of neighbouring uses, including Thames Hospice, remain central considerations, and these have been fully considered,” the spokesperson said.