Detailed plans revealed for new homes in Northumberland village

The Avenue, through Medburn, is a major source of concern.

A bid to discharge the reserved matters (access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale) in relation to eight detached, five-bedroom homes with double garages on land north of Orchard House, off The Avenue, has been submitted to Northumberland County Council.

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A design and access statement says that the houses ‘will have good-quality brick facings with sandstone-coloured art-stone heads and cills’.

An outline application for the plot was approved by seven votes to one at last July’s meeting of the Castle Morpeth Local Area Council, despite ongoing concerns about the state of the road.

The meeting heard that the site is next to land where new houses are under construction, while another nearby plot is subject to a proposal to build 13 properties.

Ponteland Town Council and 10 individuals had objected to the development on the well-rehearsed grounds of Medburn being unsustainable and the impact on the narrow and already damaged The Avenue.

However, the site is also near to two others where planning permission was refused by Northumberland County Council but then granted on appeal – one for two, two-and-a-half-storey properties on land north of Dyke House and the other an outline bid for up to 16 new homes on land between Tynedale and Dyke House.

In both cases, Northumberland taxpayers had to pick up the bill for the applicant’s legal costs.

Speaking at that meeting, applicant Ian Graham explained that his family have owned the plot since the 1950s and have ‘probably had land there longer than any of those behind the previous developments and people who have come lately’.

“We don’t want special treatment, we just want to be treated the same as our neighbours,” he added.

Having been told that the planning process was not the forum for dealing with the issues relating to The Avenue, as it is a private road, the committee therefore reluctantly accepted that the planning officer’s recommendation for approval was the only way forward.

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