18/03113/FUL

122 Banbury Road Oxford Oxfordshire OX2 7BP

13 January 2019

Erection of 2no. dwelling houses (Use Class C3) within the grounds of 122 Banbury Road, including new access off Belbroughton Road, landscaped amenity space, car parking, bin and cycle storage.

This proposal endeavours to fit two large houses into a relatively small footprint. The height is kept low (each house has 2 storeys above ground, but an extensive basement), but the designs are inefficient and make poor use of the site area. The consequences of this are that House 1 is positioned right on the boundary of the site, with a proposed screening hedge which would be impossible to maintain, except by access to several gardens of properties in Cunliffe Close. With large double garages (an anachronism?), occupying some 30% of the footprint of each house, there are effectively 4 parking spaces provided for each house, yet entry and egress from the garages, particularly for House 1 would involve difficult manoeuvres. Despite the scale of the development, provision for storage of waste bins and bicycles is inadequate and impracticable, such that no bin or bicycle could be removed without removal of all others, and for collection, bins would have to be dragged up to 65 metres along the gravelled drive, to a point adjacent to Belbroughton Road. In terms of internal layouts and accommodation, the design is bizarre, as well as inefficient, as exemplified by the proposed provision of both a gymnasium and a games room to House 2, and the disposition of bedrooms variously located at basement and first floor level. We would urge refusal of this application on the grounds of these deficiencies in the design contributing to the inefficient use of the site and the impracticality of the proposals.