Hundreds of new homes approved for former RAF site

The site forms part of an allocation to build 1,250 new homes in the area

Hundreds of homes have been approved to be built on a former airfield in Staffordshire.

RAF Lichfield, which closed in 1958, will have 350 new homes built on it despite concerns being raised over the level of affordable housing within the plan and how close it is to a vacant pig farm.

The site forms part of the strategic development allocation for 1,250 new dwellings in the area as part of the Fradley Neighbourhood Plan 2017-29.

The application was approved by Lichfield District Council at a planning meeting on Monday.

An application for the site was agreed in 2018 but did not go ahead due to delays in reaching a section 106 agreement - which is about money to be paid to a council by a developer towards community and social structures - with Staffordshire County Council.

Planning agent James Beynon said: "We are now in a position where those issues are very close to being resolved; hence why we have brought the planning application back to you for determination."

The current application is the final residential phase within the strategic development allocation for homes in the area.

The original 2018 application was approved with 13% of the total being affordable housing but the new application only proposed 10%.

However, despite discussions leading to the percentage being increased to 15%, councillor Diane Evans said she was still concerned at the final figure.

"I do think it's really vital, particularly in this day and age that we have the right percentage of affordable housing because year after year we haven't had the right percentage," she said.

Worries over pig smells

Concerns were also raised over how close it was to Midland Pig farm which would be north of the site.

Councillor Keith Vernon asked planning officers if people moving in the houses would be affected if the farm restarted work.

"I don't know if that is a pig farm or a pig slaughter house but either way if I was buying one of these houses I wouldn't want to be in close proximity to the pig operations," he said.

Due to this, a condition was added for a cordon sanitaire, meaning a 200m (219yd) buffer zone from the piggery to the houses will exist until the pig farm stops being operational.

Until this condition has been met, no more than 250 houses can be built on the site, it was agreed.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.