Councillors unanimously reject Surbiton floating homes plan

10:40pm Tuesday 22nd January 2013 in News By Ross Logan, Chief Reporter

Councillors throw out Surbiton filter beds plan Councillors throw out Surbiton filter beds plan

Councillors have tonight unanimously rejected plans for floating homes on the Surbiton filter beds.

All eight members of Kingston Council's development control committee made their decisions after a meeting lasting more than three hours containing arguments from residents, planning officers and the developers themselves.

The application in Portsmouth Road, Surbiton, would have built 64 homes, a 92 berth marina, a restaurant, a nature reserve and an education centre.

It received 915 letters of objection compared to 315 letters of support.

MPs Edward Davey and Zac Goldsmith had both spoken out against the plans in the run-up to the meeting but the Kingston Society had backed them.

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Comments(7)

Beverly RA says...
6:07am Wed 23 Jan 13

I think the reporter should get the numbers right, there were eight Councllors not seven on the committee four from each party.

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LNER04 says...
7:00am Wed 23 Jan 13

Beverly RA - I think you owe owe Mr Logan an apology.

There were only 7 Councillors following the sad death of one of the Liberal Democrat members.

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Tony from Surbiton says...
9:45am Wed 23 Jan 13

LNER04 wrote:
Beverly RA - I think you owe owe Mr Logan an apology.

There were only 7 Councillors following the sad death of one of the Liberal Democrat members.
LNER04 - there should have been 9 on the committee, so 8 without councillor Frances Moseley - unless one councillor didn't turn up and their political party didn't provide a substitute.

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DB says...
10:16am Wed 23 Jan 13

I am in two minds on this proposal.

On one hand, central Surbiton desperately needs more houses (not flats) and this site is currently a disgraceful eyesore in what should be great part of town.

On the other hand, the proposal itself is greedy and, whilst an improvement on what is currently there, it is still ugly.

Additionally, South West Trains seem unable to provide any more capacity on their services and 64 new homes would undoubtedly lead to at least 100 more people needing to get the train from Surbiton station each morning.

I know 100 extra people is a drop in the ocean, but when you look at the amount of new build flats in Surbiton and houses converted into flats over the past few years, thousands of extra journeys have been created every day, not to mention the extra demand that has been created by all of the development further down the train line.

Obviously, the ideal solution is that the site is developed with the restuarant, nature reserve and education centre WITHOUT any homes thus enhancing the current situation whilst not over-developing it.

Unfortunately, I don't think that is likely to happen!

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SurbitonResident says...
9:27am Thu 24 Jan 13

There were eight on the committee. The councillors were:
Vicky Harris
Malcolm Self
Trevor Heap (substituting)
Chrissie Hitchcock
David Cunningham
Richard Hudson
Andrew Day (substituting)
Ken Smith
The committee normally has nine members, but because of the sad death of the Berrylands councillor before Christmas, her place was unable to be substituted.

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Friends of Seething Wells says...
9:34am Thu 24 Jan 13

The Friends of Seething Wells are delighted by councillors' unanimous vote to turn down Hydro’s application to develop the filter beds site at Seething Wells.

“We’re pleased they recognised the value of the ecology and heritage on the site, and took account of wide objections from Thames river sports clubs.

“We’ve been particularly grateful for the tremendous show of support from the community, ecology and heritage specialists and river users, who will all feel vindicated by this decision.

“The Committee councillors not only considered it an inappropriate proposal for such a rare and protected site, falling way short of meeting the “very special circumstances” required to build on Metropolitan Open Land, but also that it ran counter to Kingston’s recently adopted Core Strategy.

"We’re really excited at the opportunity this opens up for collaborating with a wide community that has come together so enthusiastically behind a shared cause, keen to contribute to the development of a far more fitting future for this historically and ecologically vivid site."

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SurbitonResident says...
9:29am Sun 27 Jan 13

It is clear the Kingston Society is getting a little too close to the developers Hydro.

According to the Facebook feed of one of the lobbyists working for Hydro, they "have just , thanks to George Rome Innes (from the Kingston Society), been to see the Japanese embroidery exhibition at the Ashmolean."

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