Go-ahead for new homes at Ellington

A reserved matters application for land south of Aiden Grove and Lynemouth Road was unanimously approved at Tuesday’s meeting of the county council’s planning committee.

An outline bid for up to 400 homes on the former Ellington Colliery site was approved in August 2015 before full plans for a Co-op store were then given the nod in November last year.

The first phase is for 99 of the proposed 400 homes, which would consist of 14 two-bedroom apartments, four two-bedroom bungalows, 15 other two-bedroom properties, 30 three-bedroom townhouses and 36 three and four-bedroom detached properties.

While the development was largely welcomed, the one disappointment was the fact that the site will only provide 3.5 per cent afforable housing, or 14 homes out of the 400.

This was highlighted at the meeting by Stephen To, who welcomed the scheme other than the affordable housing.

“It’s not good enough for the people of Ellington that for 50 years they have not had any social housing,” he said.

The applicant is the county council’s development company Arch and Coun Richard Dodd pointed out that the Arch applications that came before the committee tended to have very little affordable housing.

However, in this case, the section 106 agreement was signed by the previous developer, Harworth Estates, before Arch became involved in the scheme. There is also the opportunity to reappraise the situation once remedial work – likely to be costly and the reason for the reduced affordable housing – on the site has taken place.