Residents from the Long Leys Road area have raised a petition to protect the special status of their neighbourhood from the impact of the Central Lincolnshire Local Plan, which would change their homes from a protected Urban Village into the same category as Outer Circle Road.
“This must be a mistake,” claims Chris Taylor who speaks for residents in the area. “Over the past 19 years, since the City of Lincoln plan was adopted in 1998, hundreds of new homes have been built and families have been attracted by the promise of a village atmosphere surrounded by important areas of open space including Lincoln Edge, Burton Cliff, and West Common.
“Significantly, that ‘special policy zone’ status restricted business to light industry and offices, but now the new Central Lincolnshire Local Plan wants to downgrade the area by allowing more categories of industry that would put our family homes next door to the equivalent of Outer Circle Road, Allenby Industrial Estate, or Chieftain Way.”
These proposals came to light recently when residents successfully fought an application by waste management operator Veolia to run a transfer station 24/7, just metres away from people’s homes. Under the existing City of Lincoln Plan, the application would not meet the criteria for development in the Urban Village. However the new, and as yet unadopted, Central Lincolnshire Local Plan would allow a greater range of planning applications in what would be termed an ‘Established Employment Area’.
“These recent applications have shown us how vulnerable our neighbourhood is,” says Taylor. “We have young families, thriving and expanding local schools, well loved parks, and we sing Christmas Carols round a tree on our village green. Our special status must have been overlooked somewhere, and we are asking councillors and officers from the City and the County to look again at the reasons that prompted Lincoln to grant us Urban Village status in 1998. Since then the area has developed with that understanding, and we want that status carried forward to the new Central Lincoln Local Plan, with its limitation of nothing more than light industrial and office premises. Anything beyond that is unacceptable.”
The petition can be found online at…
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save-special-status-of-long-leys-urban-village-1?just_launched=true.
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