60 new homes to be built short walk from Cambs’ village high street

More than 60 homes are set to be built just a nine-minute walk from Somersham High Street if new plans gain council support. The application for 64 homes and a community building in Colne Road, Somersham, was submitted to Huntingdonshire^[1] District Council on June 26, 2023.

The site is around 150 metres south of the village’s high street, on the western side of Colne Road. Applicant Living Space Homes proposes redeveloping Cranbrook Plants garden centre and the adjoining field to pave the way for the homes.

The design and access statement, by Malcolm Payne Group on behalf of the applicant, said: “The application site is sustainably located, within walking distance of the core of Somersham. The village provides local shops, services and community facilities.

“It is along a bus route to the nearby towns of St. Ives and Ramsey, two of the district’s largest service centres. The proposals would make efficient use of previously developed land to deliver a well-designed arrangement of new homes, contributing towards meeting the district’s identified housing needs.

“A new community building would be provided in a location most accessible to the existing village. Areas of public open space, overlooked by the new houses, would offer amenity to residents of the scheme and the wider community.”

Living Space Homes changed its proposals for the 3.2-hectare site according to constraints and feedback from consultants. The application is for less than half of the homes in the original scheme - which laid out 131 homes.

The buildings would be mainly two-storey, though the southwestern edge of the site would include bungalows. The community building would be single-storey and larger than the homes. Open pasture land would sit to the north.

An existing house on the site, Park Fields, would be kept but with ‘minor alterations’ undertaken to ‘better relate to the arrangement of new dwellings’.

The application proposes that one-bedroom homes would have one parking spot, while those with more bedrooms would have a minimum of two. There would also be 20 visitor parking spaces.

The design and access statement continues: “Three vehicular and pedestrian accesses are proposed along the Colne Road frontage: via the existing entrance to the Cranbrook Plants nurseries at the centre of the site; the existing entrance to the retained dwelling house to the south, and via a new entrance to be formed further north along Colne Road.”

Somersham village includes a nursery and primary school, alongside a post office, library, doctor’s surgery, pharmacy, dentist, pub, coffee shop, petrol station - and convenience stores.

Application documents and site plans can be found here^[3].

References

1. ^{^} Huntingdonshire (www.cambridge-news.co.uk)
2. ^{^} The Cambridgeshire area where house prices have risen by almost £40k in a year (www.cambridge-news.co.uk)
3. ^{^} here (publicaccess.huntingdonshire.gov.uk)