Nine new houses are due to be built on Wenny Road in Chatteris, laid out in a planning application submitted to Fenland District Council (FDC).  

Hawthorne Properties plans to build six three-story and three two-story houses on the road, in place of a disused, detached building which will be demolished.  

The principle of the development is acceptable, FDC’s planning officers and councillors have said – but questions remain over access.  

The site, 14–16 Wenny Road, shares a junction with Ellingham Gardens, a private road which FDC councillors say is in a “poor state”. 

Who owns the road is unclear, they said at a planning meeting this week, and the management company supposed to maintain it has let it become overgrown and in need of new top surface.   

The councillors agreed to defer approving the application until they can speak to developers – who did not attend the meeting – about options for ensuring the road is maintained as residents of the new properties will be affected by it.  

“There is an opportunity here, as councillors, to put something right that is wrong,” Cllr Ian Benney (Conservatives, Chatteris South) said. “And that’s what we should be doing.”  

He continued that Ellingham Gardens is a “mess” and that all councillors can do to try to rectify this is by asking developers for assurance that it will be dealt with in future.  

FDC head of planning Nick Harding said that existing conditions attached to approval of the application do all the council can to compel developers to ensure the area is looked after; but councillors agreed that even a further verbal assurance was worth delaying approving the application for.  

It is now likely to return to an FDC meeting next month before approval.  

While a smaller development, the new houses in Wenny Road join a range of house building schemes underway in Chatteris. 

In July, 93 homes were approved on Chatteris’s final undeveloped open space, known as Wenny Meadow.  

The following month, an application for 150 new homes was submitted for the land south of The Elms, less than a mile from the meadow.