The revised outline planning permission for Crab Hill was approved by the Planning Committee at the Vale of White Horse District Council last week.

This was revised for several reasons, mainly because the original permission (granted in 2015) requires all detailed applications for the new homes etc. to be submitted by 13 July this year and the developers say that it’s not feasible to do this.

The original application was for 1500 homes to be built around the back of Charlton village from Grove Road (near the Mably Roundabout) to the A417 near Charlton cricket pitch.

So far 720 dwellings have received full planning consent and nearly 500 have been completed.

An application for a further 145 homes has been submitted, but applications for the remaining 635 haven’t yet been developed.

As part of this application the developers are squeezing in a further 34 dwellings.

This isn’t as bad as it sounds, because they have already squeezed in 22 more homes in the part of the site known as Phase 1B (just west of Castle’s Wood) so only have to find space to add an addition 12 new homes.

The full 34 more homes have been added without changing the amount of open space available so must have reduced the footprint of each home.

As they are adding more homes, they will have to provide more affordable homes and more infrastructure contributions towards health care provision, public transport, cycleways, the Byway Open to All Traffic (BOAT) south of the development, education and the recycling centre.

No further payments are included for library facilities or leisure facilities such as sports equipment, the Canal or the Museum.

The application covers land already subject to permissions relating to ground levels and drainage schemes but we have been assured by the developer that the levels, earthworks and drainage as approved will be implemented in full.

So hopefully the existing homes on Charlton Heights will not be subject to overlooking or water runoff from the new development.

They were planning to add allotments next to the current allotments on Grove Road but decided that the bank was too steep to fit in allotments and a path up to the site at the top of the hill so are now planning the allotments in the centre of the site and a zig-zag path up the hill from Grove Road.