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24/00107/FUL Demolition of residential dwelling at 6A Bucknills Close and the construction of five residential units (5 x 3-bed) (Class C3) together with car parking, landscaping and access arrangements.

The current application has been submitted to address the reasons for refusal relating to 23/00577/FUL. In the interest of speed, the Society used the “Comments” facility on the EEBC Planning website rather than writing a letter as usual. The text is shown in full below.

“Epsom Civic Society contends that the access arrangements are still inadequate and accordingly this application should also be refused.

The current application has not made any change to the site access driveway but has now incorporated a separate pedestrian link at the rear of the site which provides footpath access onto Dorking Road via Bucknills Close. The applicant asserts in the Transport Statement that the ‘small amount of additional pedestrian movements generated by the proposal would most likely to be travelling via Bucknills Close.’ Epsom Civic Society challenges that assumption. In the majority of cases residents will be wishing to walk into Epsom town centre or access facilities such as local schools, the hospital or the park and would use the quickest and shortest route which is via the access road onto Whitehouse Drive. Accordingly, the application continues to fail to comply with the requirement in the SCC Design Guide that ‘driveways should be widened to 4.1 metres where parking may regularly occur along the access road or where they also provide regular pedestrian access’.

The previous reason for refusal still stands with inadequate space available within the access driveway to safely accommodate both pedestrian and vehicular movements. In addition, there is inadequate space to provide a ‘passing space’ for vehicles utilising the access driveway to allow oncoming vehicles from Whitehorse Drive to pass safely, resulting in the potential for vehicles to have to reverse out onto the highway in an area of high pedestrian activity, especially at school arrival or departure times. The application would be contrary to Policies CS16, DM16 and DM36.

Epsom Civic Society also has significant reservations about the practicality of the revised arrangements in this application for the refuse and recycling collection that is now shown as an on-site bin collection point at the south-west corner of the site. Residents would be responsible for taking their own bins to the Bin Collection Point on collection days but in the case of Unit 1 this would involve pushing/pulling a number of bins some 90m distance from the rear garden bin storage area to the bin collection point on Bucknills Close. Residents at Unit 2 would have around 80m distance to negotiate.

Epsom Civic Society considers it unacceptable that residents should be required to transport bins over this kind of distance, especially if elderly or infirm. Accordingly we submit that the layout conflicts with Policy CS16 of the Core Strategy 2007 and Policy DM10 of the Development Management Policies Document 2015, with regard to the safe and convenient provision of refuse and recycling.”

See our previous letter regarding application 23/00577/FUL here .