A TWICE-delayed decision is set to be made next week on whether 2,350 new homes will be built in Cirencester.

A special Cotswold District Council (CDC) meeting will be held at 10am on Tuesday at Cirencester Baptist Church, to consider the outline planning application for Chesterton Farm, led by Bathurst Development Limited (BDL).

The decision was deferred for three months at a special meeting on September 25 last year, on the grounds that further details were needed on issues of access relating to a bus-only road.

A second scheduled meeting on December 12 was then postponed due to snow and icy conditions.

As part of the scheme, which has been recommended for approval by CDC officers, 30 per cent of houses (705) built will be affordable, 65 per cent will be rented accommodation and 35 per cent will be low cost home ownership.

Proposed S106 agreements include a £100,000 contribution by developers for town centre improvements, £500,000 for town centre parking, £144,165 towards police services and a new primary school for 630 pupils.

But campaign group Save Our Cirencester (SOC), has reiterated that CDC should wait until the Local Plan findings have been published or refuse the scheme and ask BDL to re-submit a significantly smaller plan.

Anne Golics, of SOC, said: “The application is outside the current development boundary. The application should be refused as it does not provide development in the most sustainable location in Cirencester.

“The ‘new’ Local Plan has recently been through its Examination in Public and the inspector is to publish his findings in the spring. By waiting for the inspector’s report, the council would be better informed to make the decision.

“At the examination, planning officers somewhat reluctantly revealed that their housing supply figure is some 2,400 more houses than their Objectively Assessed Need figure for the Cotswold district.

“I, along with so many other residents, do not object to development per se.

“It is the size of this application relative to the size of the town that will destroy the capital of the Cotswolds, forever.”

Graeme Phillips, lead architect for BDL, reassured members of the community in September last year: “We remain committed to creating a new sustainable, sympathetically designed, and genuinely integrated new neighbourhood for Cirencester with employment, community and leisure facilities at its heart.”

“Set in a unique network of landscaped routes and spaces, it will offer new homes and jobs to suit a wide range of people, and make an important contribution to this historic market town.”

Fellow SOC member Fiona Uzzell also asked councillors to “consider the very real concerns that the people of Cirencester and local villages” have.

“My primary request is to defer any decision until the Inspector has published his findings, as several issues were raised regarding the Chesterton site at the month long local plan examination hearings, the majority of which I attended.

“I for one was left in no doubt that the distribution strategy in the CDC’s local plan is unsound and that 2,350 proposed homes for the Chesterton site is excessive, and would destroy Cirencester as we know it forever.”