Plans for 53 homes to be built on a former school site have been put on hold due to concerns over bin collections. Vistry Homes wants to create the housing estate on the old Seabridge Community Education Centre site.

But Newcastle Borough Council's planning committee sent back the the Roe Lane scheme to the developer. Councillors were primarily concerned with the loss of 14 trees, the impact on residents and the design. Another issue centred on part of the development being on unadopted roads which would impact on bins.

It would have included a mix of two-storey houses with between two and five bedrooms. A quarter of the properties would have been affordable housing.

Eleanor Lovett, planning agent told the planning committee: "Overall the proposals provide a high quality residential development and will bring back into use this vacant brownfield site through the provision of much needed family housing."

Concerns raised included the loss of 14 trees and the development being on unadopted roads which would impact bin collections (Google).

However, members raised the issue of bin collections. Under the plans nine households will be situated on unadopted roads which means bin wagons won't go down them.

As a result, some residents would be forced to leave their bin at a collection point to be emptied. Currently the council has no policy in place on maximum distances. This means that one house on the estate would have to walk 29 metres to the collection point, with most having to walk between seven and 17 metres.

Councillor Andy Fear said: "Nine out of 53 proposed dwellings would be served on private roads and have to pull their bins out from time to time. That doesn't sound so much but actually when you do the maths on that, it's the best part of 17 per cent, in other words one in six houses will in fact be subjected to this."

Councillor Fear asked why the developer was doing this, other than to save money. In response a planning officer told committee members that it can soften the impact of development as adopted roads need to meet certain criteria.

There would be a mix of two, three, four and five bedroom homes and a quarter of these would be affordable (Vistry Homes).

Councillor David Hutchison was not happy over the situation of leaving roads unadopted which would force people to walk up to 30 metres to get their bin collected and said this is 2024 not 1954, unadopted roads should not be a thing in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

He told fellow planning committee members: "I'm not happy about the nine dwellings that have got to take their bin up to 29 metres. Houses on unadopted roads, if there is only one person in the dwelling and they have mobility issues they can ask for assisted collection.

"So the crew member would go down your garden path, collect your bin, take it out, put it in the truck and then pop it back for you – we do not do that on unadopted roads. Houses that the developer wants to sell need to basically make it clear to people that they will never get their bin collected as an assisted collection."

The principle of the development was already established following a planning inspector overturning the original decision by the council in 2020 to reject the application. This means councillors were only deciding on matters relating to the character and appearance of the development, trees, hedgerows and public open space and residential amenity.

Councillors also raised the issue that 14 mature trees were set to be felled by the developer in order to build the properties and questioned whether this was in fact necessary. Councillors voted to defer the application to see if the developer would take onboard the feedback and amend the plans and minimise the impacts on nearby neighbours and sort out the issue of unadopted roads.

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