Acoustic screening along a stretch of the Gedling Access Road (GAR) in Mapperley will now be installed after proposals to ditch them were rejected at a council planning meeting tonight (November 6).
Planning officers had advised that the the screens at the Mapperley end of the GAR would be ‘detrimental to the visual amenity of the area’ and should be removed from plans.
Officers felt that the landscape had changed considerably since the proposals were originally put forward and now weren’t necessary to protect houses and wildlife from the noise.
But these recommendations were unanimously rejected by Gedling Borough Council‘s planning committee, who met earlier tonight (November 6).
Cllr Michael Payne, who is councillor for Arnold North, and Vernon Coaker were joined by representatives of the Friends of Gedling Country Park and local residents to make their case to the committee about the screens remaining as part of the overall plans.
The head of planning for Gedling Borough Council, Mike Avery, also gave planning officers the opportunity to make their case for removing the screens.
In a letter read out at the meeting, Cllr Payne, pictured, above, wrote: “The inclusion of acoustic screening at this section of the GAR was an undertaking given to the local community as a mitigation measure in relation to the new noise arising from the GAR.
“On balance I strongly believe the retention of the acoustic screening will help ensure this major infrastructure project is not overly detrimental to the residents living in close proximity to it. Whilst the GAR may only be proposed as a 40mph road, there will still clearly be new noise pollution arising from its use.”
“In my view, the noise mitigation and protection to local wildlife habitat by the retention of these two particular sections of acoustic screening along the GAR outweighs concerns about detrimental impact on the visual amenity of the area.”
After the meeting, Cllr Payne told Gedling Eye that the decision was ‘a victory for common sense’.
He said: “It was a real team effort to ensure the plans for the screens remained. It was great to work with residents, the Friends of Gedling Country Park and Vernon Coaker on this.
“I’d like to thank the cross-party planning committee for patiently listening to all the views for and against tonight before unanimously voting that the recommendation was ignored.
“It’s all about trust and I think that we’d have struggled to get people to believe in the planning process if we’d lost tonight. They’d have felt like we had gone back on our word to protect their properties and local wildlife.”
Nowt to do with looking after the owners of the big posh houses up that way then? Just wondered seeing as when ever have GBC been bothered about how noise affects wildlife. Just saying.