By Carole Dennett
At the meeting of the Isle of Wight Council’s Planning Committee on Tuesday a proposal to build a new commercial and leisure park on a greenfield site next to Sandown Airport was thrown out.
Agent for the developers, Phil Salmon, said the plans represented “major inward investment” to the Island and claimed they could create up to 500 jobs.
The site was originally proposed for development in 2018, but problems with traffic safety and making public transport accessible and were key to the plans being refused. Despite efforts by the developers since then no option had been found to find a bus stop location that would be acceptable to Island Roads. This led Cllr Julie Jones-Evans to raise the point that failure to find a safe bus stop was stopping the deliverability of development on land that had been identified as suitable for providing employment opportunities.
Cllr Matthew Price said that he found it hard to vote against the proposals but accepted that the safety and public transport issues needed to be resolved and he would also like to see “more meat on the bone about the employment and figures.”
The plans were recommended for refusal by officers and members voted against the development proceeding by seven votes to two with one abstention.
Mal Butler