Plans have been approved for 140 new homes in Lockleaze on the site of an old council depot. Local residents however warned the site has access issues, with just a narrow lane the only means of getting to and from the new housing development.
Goram Homes, owned by Bristol City Council, now has outline planning permission for 140 homes at the site to the east of Dovercourt Road. The area is currently used as a storage depot by the council.
Half of the homes will be classed as ‘affordable’, and they will be a mix of two, three and four storeys tall. Councillors on the development control committee voted to grant permission for the scheme on Wednesday, October 12.
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Christiana Makariou, from Goram Homes, said: “We know there are people across our city waiting for a home, and with this development on brownfield land we aim to build 70 affordable homes. That’s 70 families with a place to live.
“Alongside the council, we’ve worked with the community and responded to their concerns by removing an additional emergency access point, reducing the total number of homes and increasing parking, and contributing to traffic calming measures on Dovercourt Road. We’ll continue to work with the community to understand how our plans can benefit the area.”
But the main issue with the development, the committee heard, was access to the site. Developers will pay to widen the pavement leading to the old depot, as well as install traffic calming measures on Dovercourt Road.
Richard Dinham, a local resident, said: “It’s going to have a massive impact on traffic. The traffic survey was done over the Easter holidays, the day before Good Friday when lots of people were away. If there were respect for local residents, something like that wouldn’t happen, it would happen in peak traffic conditions. We’re very concerned about safety.”
It’s also unclear whether a new walking and cycling path will link from the south of the site onto Concorde Way. One councillor said if housing wasn’t built on the site, it could instead be used by an industrial business and see lorries driving down the residential Dovercourt Road.
Labour Councillor Fabian Breckels said: “I think this is an appropriate site for housing. If we didn’t put housing on here, we could flog that to some kind of heavy industrial developer or business, and we could have HGVs and goodness knows what coming in and out all the time.
“If I were a pedestrian or cyclist, I would rather not confront something that big on a road like that. Loads of developments have much smaller access roads than this. It isn’t perfect, but nothing is. We’ve had to try and do the best we can, with what we’ve actually got.”
