IMPORTANT PLANNING NOTICE

Published: 05 August 2023

IMPORTANT NOTICE

PLEASE READ AND REGISTER YOUR COMMENTS TO THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT

Please write, email or report on line your views

Deadline for comments 15.08.2023

To Planning Officer Gwyn Humphreys 01978 298782 gwyn.humphreys@wrexham.gov.uk

Please note that your comments do count.

Your community matters.

Planning applications P/2023/0422 and P/2023/0408 (RETROSPECTIVE)

· Erection of one class B1 building (light industrial) and one class B8 building (warehouse building) C and M Haulage. Maelor Works (Flo Gas site) on B5130 Cross Lanes. Deadline for comments 15.08.2023

· Installation of plant equipment and associated works, Unit 1. Ningbo, Maelor Works (Flo Gas site) Cross Lanes. Deadline 17.08.2023

These applications relate to unauthorised developments, which were reported to the Enforcement officer in March 2023 this year, having first notified the Planning department of our suspicions two years earlier. The understanding was that the activities at the site were being monitored. Further concerns were raised by SCC. when activities at the site escalated.

The Enforcement Officer reported back in April 2023, ‘I have advised the Agent that his client should stop any further development on the site, however if he continues this is at his own risk.

My next course of action will be to serve a planning contravention notice so that I can try and ascertain the exact breaches on the site’

A site visit took place involving the Ecology Officer the police and NRW, who are carrying out their own investigations.

While still under investigation the site continues to be advertised at the entrance on the B5130 and on the website.

This site was not identified in the UDP (Unitary Development Plan) as a site for industrial development. The current LDP (Local Development Plan) has not yet been adopted. It is well known in the community that for years the land has been unsuitable for development on account of it being contaminated, due to its previous history.

The site was purchased in November 2019, subject to planning approval, which has not been acquired, and there has been no consultation with Sesswick Community Council or local residents to assess the impact it will have on the Cross Lanes community.

Retrospective applications are now being presented in an attempt to establish a new industrial site in the open countryside. This post development application approach defeats the purpose of how the planning system operates, where all parties are entitled to have their say before a planning decision is made and before buildings are erected.

The massive increase in large HGV traffic is creating highway safety issues at the traffic lights and the co-op shop and is a hazard to walkers, horse riders and other road users on the B5130, which is unsuitable for such heavy industrial traffic. If these developments are allowed the HGV traffic will intensify as more units are taken up.

There has been unauthorized devastation of an area of mature woodland, natural vegetation and wild life, which has existed for over 70 + years, biodiversity destroyed and laid bare and the surface replaced with hard core.

Maelor Works site contains a number of main gas pipe lines serving the area, and it is a gas distribution centre (Flo Gas), which presents a major hazard for combustion should a fire break out in connection with the many vehicles accessing the site and the overnight parking.

There has already been a major fire in recent times relating to a breakage yard, set up without authorisation.

The wellbeing of this community is being compromised, in the interests of the applicants and the land lord.

Sesswick community Council