FORMAL consultation on controversial plans to build a housing estate in fields on the Wellington Monument side of the town’s relief road closed on Friday (February 6) with nearly 200 objections registered on Somerset Council’s planning portal.

Although comments can still be made on the application by Pegasus Group to build 250 houses in fields south of Wellington Relief Road, the council is not now obliged to take them into consideration.

A total of 199 objections were registered, including from Wellington Town Council and Wellington Without Parish Council, in whose area the proposed housing estate is sited, while the responses from residents were largely led by campaign group Wellington Protect, formed specifically to fight the plans.

Wellington Without parish clerk Neil Dalton said on behalf of councillors there were material planning reasons why the application should be refused.

Mr Dalton said the development would breach the ‘clear, logical, and defensible boundary’ between the built-up area of Wellington to the north of the relief road and open countryside to the south.

It would see the permanent loss of greenfield land and productive farmland, urbanising the southern approach to the town and fundamentally altering the character of the parish, almost doubling the housing stock and population without providing local facilities and ‘effectively transforming a rural parish into an urban extension of the town’.

Substantial additional traffic would be generated, adding to congestion and undermining the function of the A38 as a by-pass for the town and creating unacceptable risk for pedestrians.

Mr Dalton said the road and surrounding land were prone to flooding during heavy rainfall and Wellington’s sewerage and wastewater infrastructure was already under severe strain following extensive recent housebuilding.

He said the parish did not have any schools, GP surgeries, shops, community buildings, or recreational facilities, none of which was adequately addressed by the proposal.