Letter from Tim Yeo MP

Nick Ward Esq
Chief Planning Control Officer
Babergh District Council
Corks Lane
Hadleigh
Suffolk IP7 6SJ

29 October 2007

Re: Planning Application B/00/01318/RES/GD

I am concerned at the latest application under reserved matters for 404 “retirement homes” on the former HMS Ganges site on the Shotley peninsula.

This scheme is considerably larger than the planned 325 development which was turned down at the public inquiry last year as unsustainable, and very much larger than originally conceived for a retirement village back in 1997.

Since these plans also include many more three and even four and five bedroom homes than the 1997 scheme, were there to be any diminution in the minimum age limit for occupation of 55+ years, it would effectively make this merely an alternative but larger scheme than that which was rejected by the inspector and the Minister.

All the factors which made the last application for this site unacceptable remain and always will do; namely that Shotley is at the end of a peninsula with poor transport access which includes the conservation area of Woolverstone.

I am further concerned that for the developers to have seen fit to propose this scheme at all suggests to residents that Babergh council officers may have been giving developers and the local community mixed messages about what will now be considered acceptable development of the site.