Bedford Borough Council has come under fire from a Biddenham resident who claims the authority isn’t properly policing construction work.
Construction Management Plans (CMPs) are meant to keep building sites in check – minimising disruption to neighbours, but a neighbour of the Cala Homes development off Bromham Road said mud from construction vehicles has been dragged across private driveways.
Read: Locals raise concerns over Biddenham development drainage
When approached by the LDRS, the council said its planning enforcement team was not investigating possible breaches of the CMP because it had “not received any complaints” through its formal reporting system.
A Cala Homes spokesperson said the developer was delivering the scheme “in full compliance” with the approved CMP, noting that council officers had visited the site and confirmed that appropriate measures were in place.
“The first layer of tarmac has now been laid on the access road. Construction will re-commence in early January, with regular road sweeping and the installation of a wheel wash to minimise the spread of mud.
“We will be communicating a precise start date to residents once this is determined,” they said.
However, Cala did not elaborate on how often “regular” was.
“Developer’s responsibility”
A Borough Council spokesperson said: “It is a developer’s responsibility to ensure that development proceeds in accordance with any conditions imposed on a planning permission.
“The council takes a prioritised and intelligence-led approach to monitoring the significant number of live development sites within the borough.
“As part of this approach, we will, of course, investigate any complaints relating to development activity on individual sites.”
The authority also said there are procedures in place for residents to challenge the conduct or findings of enforcement investigations. But Martin Shaw, the resident who raised the concerns, disputes the council’s position.
He said: “The council have allowed this development to proceed by failing to read the CMP correctly and ensure that the main access road was included within it.”
He said Cala had been able to continue work without breaching the document because the CMP’s construction zone applies only to the main site, not the access road.
“The CMP refers to the access road only in relation to temporary traffic management and fencing,” he said. He also argued that reporting issues would have been ineffective because the construction was fast-moving.
“Even if we did report the mud, the council would have taken many weeks before they would have actioned any reported issue.
“By the time the council got their act together, the reported issue would have gone away,” he said.
