A HOUSING site intended to help facilitate development of Wellington’s proposed railway station is being sold off just weeks after receiving planning permission.

West of England Developments (WoED) received consent in August to build up to 200 new homes plus employment units and a spine road leading to the station behind the town’s Lidl supermarket.

The approval was given just days after the Government suspended £15 million funding promised for the station development, leaving its future in doubt.

Now, WoED is marketing the 19 acres housing element of the site for sale by informal tender with a deadline for bids to be submitted by 12noon on Friday (October 11).

On Wednesday, the online prospectus for the site was marked by agents Kitchener Land and Planning (KLP) as ‘sold subject to contract’.

WoED boasted that all the new homes could be sold on the open market because Somerset Council did not impose its usual planning requirement for 25 per cent of the properties to be ‘affordable’.

And because the site lies just inside Wellington’s parish boundary, none of the properties will be subject to a community infrastructure levy (CIL) ‘tax’ charged at £125 per square metre of residential development, some of which goes to the town council to help meet the costs of providing facilities for the extra residents.

The ‘affordable housing’ requirement was dropped by planners to help make the development viable for WoED in exchange for the company meeting the cost of building the station access road and setting aside land for a car park plus a public square which was to have been taken over by the town council.

A spokesperson for KLP said it was a ‘fantastic opportunity to acquire a development site with the benefit of outline planning permission’ on the northern edge of Wellington.

The spokesperson said: “We are only currently marketing the residential element for up to 200 dwellings, although offers for the whole may be considered.”

They said a separate planning application had been submitted for the spine road and it was hoped any purchaser would take on the work.

Town councillors were working closely with WoED on its plans and this week recommended the spine road application should be approved.

One councillor told the Wellington Weekly: “We have always viewed WoED as a developer with a good reputation locally and were confident the new station and the public realm works alongside it were safe with them involved.

“So, this sale, which we have not been told about, feels a little like a kick in the teeth for us and makes us wonder what is going on.”

WoED director Chris Winter told the Wellington Weekly: “It was always the intention to sell the site as we had a promotion agreement with the land owners, which meant we had to market and sell the site once we had secured a planning permission.

“There had been strong interest because of its location and that we had a phosphate mitigation solution for the new homes.”