New houses earmarked for Whitehaven

COPELAND Council has given outline planning permission for 110 homes to be built in Whitehaven.

The homes are earmarked for a 5.6-hectare site off Harras Road, to the west of Whitehaven Golf Club, and the outline permission has been awarded for the scheme’s two phases of 10 homes in phase one, and 100 in phase two.

Councillors, who made the decision at a meeting on Wednesday, heard from the applicant North Associates that the scheme would bring “a broad range of attractive new houses to Whitehaven to entice new residents to the area and to support a growing workforce in the future”.

The North Associates spokeswoman added that a drainage strategy has been designed to alleviate any flooding concerns.

A detailed full planning application must be submitted to Copeland Council before any work can start. The outline permission lasts for three years.

Lena Hogg, Copeland Council’s Portfolio Holder for Housing, said: “Growth is very much on this Council’s agenda, and supporting people to build high quality new homes is a major part of this strategy.

“It’s important, with the major investment heading our way, that people who come to work in Copeland have a wide choice of housing in the borough, thereby boosting our economy.”

Meanwhile, Copeland Council has reported a 100 per cent success rate in terms of planning applications processed within designated timescales for the first three months of the year.

Between April and June, the Council’s planning team dealt all four ‘major’ applications it received within the 13-week deadline, and all 86 ‘minor’ or ‘other’ applications within the eight-week deadline.