Work to build a windbreak at a Fylde holiday park will last until December

Lancashire County Council’s development control committee has extended the construction period permitted to build a bund at Ream Hills Farm in Weeton.

The operation at the Mythop Road site should have been completed by February 2020 under planning permission that approved a 27-month timeframe to carry out the work.

However, last year, the authority received a complaint that the inert waste needed to construct the bund was still being imported. After an inspection, planning officers confirmed that sufficient material had been brought onto the site to create the screening feature, which will be between two and two-and-a-half metres high, 30m wide and 500m long.

Committee members have now said that the process of reprofiling the waste to the approved dimensions can continue until 31st December.

At the meeting where the decision was made, councillors were told that the bund was intended to shelter Ream Hills Holiday Park, whose website advertises luxury lodges and touring caravan pitches. The facility is located around 200m north of the M55 motorway.

“This area is quite flat [and] quite windy,” said principal planning officer Jonathan Haine, explaining the rationale for the bund.

County Hall had originally refused permission for the feature back in 2015, but it was granted on appeal to the planning inspectorate later that year.

Objections to the time extension included one from Fylde borough councillor John Singleton who said that the development was “ruining the lives of residents of Staining and Weeton, mainly retired and who seek some peace, due to dozens of large HGVs using Mythop Road every day from the early hours in the morning until late afternoon”.

However, explaining why planning officers had rejected a request for 10am to 4pm time limit on HGV movements for the remaining period of work, Mr. Haine said: “No further material shall be imported, so therefore there should be no more HGVs [travelling] to this site, other than perhaps the occasional [one] involving bringing [equipment] for some regrading works – or maybe vehicles coming in [to assist with] tree planting.”

However, one of the conditions imposed on the permission reaffirmed the existing requirement for wheel-washing facilities to be used by any HGVs that do enter and leave the site, after highways officers reported receiving complaints about mud being brought out onto Mythop Road. One passing vehicle reportedly skidded off the route last summer as a result.