A FORMER mayor has described the A38 as acting like a dike for Wellington and was “holding back the flood” of housing.
“But I’ve got an awful feeling that the Government wants more houses built and they’ll go for any low hanging fruit,” said Cllr Mark Lithgow, during Wellington Town Council’s policy and finance meeting on March 10 about the possible 250-home development on land south of the A38 at Oldway Road.
“We are not against housing – but we want housing in the right place.”
Cllr John Thorne had another warning for councillors about the possible development.
“The applicants are in talks with Somerset Council,” he said. “If they do put in an application then we will know that Somerset Council has told them that they can build there.
“We’re all on the same page in opposition to this development. This poses a real threat to Wellington and life will change forever. Wellington will be a different town.
“We do need professional help to formulate our views. This is such an important issue and the impact on the town is going to be immense. We need expert guidance.
“We need to set up a working group and sit down with Wellington Without Parish Council and work together on this.”
Cllr Andrew Govier said: “I have a dilemma about getting someone in. There are experts in the community who might be able to do this in-house rather than us employing someone who will just re-write a report they’ve written before and just change the name of the town on it.”
Councillors voted in favour to send in their objections to LVA as part of the developer’s public consultation, have talks with Wellington Without Parish Council to draw up detailed arguments about the proposal and look at getting in “external specialist support.”