Supplementary Officer Report 05/92137/REM

Supplementary Report

Re: PA 05/92137 – approval for reserved matters for the erection of three detached dwellings, associated parking, landscaping and access, Level Garage site, The Level, Colby, Isle of Man IM9 4AL.

As is referred to in the principal report, planning permission was sought for the erection of six dwellings on this appeal site. That application, PA 05/91209 was determined on appeal and the report of the Inspector and the Minister’s decision are attached. The decision of the Planning Committee in this application was to refuse the application on the basis that the parking arrangements were unsatisfactory and resulted in overdevelopment of the site, inadequate amenity space between the houses and the roadway and parked vehicles and car parking spaces very close to other residents and their property.

The Inspector confirms this reason for refusal and also makes comments which could be relevant to the consideration of this application. The Inspector notes at his paragraph 22 that the development “would appear cramped and out of place”. This latest application proposed half as many properties although the buildings themselves are almost as large as those proposed previously. The amount of traffic associated with half as many dwellings will be less and the amount of hard surfacing and parking facilities also less.

The Inspector comments on the limited amount of rear gardens and clearly with a reduced number of dwellings, the amount of amenity space available to each will be considerably more. The Inspector makes specific reference to the treatment of the rear boundary alongside the Main Road (A7) and the 1.2m high wall which around most of the rear garden of house number 4 would only be 1m high. As there are fewer houses, the concern regarding number 4 is not relevant here and house number 3 has a rear wall which will be the 1.2m height most of the way around. In addition, the Planning Committee when approving the application required that an additional condition be attached requiring that the stone boundary wall be in place prior to the occupation of the dwellings alongside the main road (A7) and this should be supplemented by an evergreen shrub hedge which must be permitted to grow above the height of the roadside wall to provide privacy to those whose back gardens backs onto the main road and help screen the dwellings as viewed from the road. This condition would satisfy the concerns of the Inspector reporting on the previous application.

The Inspector also comments on the need to provide part of the visibility splay through the garden of one of the proposed dwellings and this latest scheme is no different although as the overall garden area is much larger, the amount affected by the visibility splay is much less as a proportion of the overall private amenity space. It is relevant that the visibility splay concerned involves the view from a vehicle emerging from the site, not of approaching vehicles which have to be avoided on emerging from the site, but of vehicles passing the junction which will be approached once the vehicle has left the site. Whilst the side garden wall of the property would have to be kept below 1m, the rear garden wall bounding the A7 will be higher, supplemented by the hedging required by the Planning Committee.