IT was by the narrowest of margins that the controversial plans for up to 111 houses in Raglan was approved by the county planning committee, for the second time!

The outline plans had already been previously approved by councillors in November 2018 but the data supplied by head of planning Mark Hand on the housing shortfall for the county was incorrect and an apology meant that the plans had to go through the wringer one more time.

The difference yesterday was that the application had now been called in by the Welsh Government for scrutiny and any decision made by the committee would now only be the council’s position on the plans.

The meeting seemed to be going in the favour of the placarded protestors gathered at the back of the room as Raglan County Councillor Penny Jones began by saying that the site was completely contrary to the council’s own housing plan and better options would be smaller and sustainable housing sites. She questioned why the council’s own sites had not already been developed and 45 houses approved, but not built, down the Chepstow Road was not helping to ease the pressure on the 504 house shortfall in the county.

She said the number of houses planned would put the high street and the local infrastructure under pressure saying the site was “utterly wrong” for the village.

Her views were endorsed by Raglan Community Councillor chairman Brian Willot who added that the council’s estimated figure of 24 new primary school pupils (which had brought howls of laughter from the public gallery) would have priority to the local school and pupils from the “hinterland” would be forced to endure unsustainable journeys to other schools.

Raglan Village Action Group’s (RVAG) Helen Ronchetti said that these plans would destroy Raglan’s last remaining link with the open countryside and its conservation area and although the group are not against new housing, “the sense of disbelief is palpable”.

The agent for the development, Gareth Barton was unsurprisingly sympathetic to the plan saying that the corrected housing shortfall data “does not change anything” and said there was a clear need for affordable housing and the £800k financial contribution from the developers towards the infrastructure was substantial.

So it was all going rather well with Cllr Matt Feakins and two others making good sense of why this application was overblown, unsustainable and disproportionate with even the chair of planning, Cllr Ruth Edwards, calling into question the analysis of the quality of the “substandard” agricultural land.

Then the tables began to turn. Councillor Maureen Powell said that not everyone can live surrounded by countryside and that lower priced housing was needed for the elderly and that new houses does not always mean new school pupils to accommodate as some may well already be living in the area.

The motion to refuse the plan was defeated by six votes to five.

A spokesperson for RVAG was disappointed by planning committee’s support for the scheme.

“The action group will continue to fight this unjustified proposal for 111 houses at every opportunity, and believes the evidence the group had presented to committee helped demonstrate that Monmouthshire was wrong in claiming that the proposal had met its planning ground rules,” they said.

“We will push the council to accept that the quickest way to provide affordable housing is to speed up delivery of the vast number of housing plots already allocated in the Local Development Plan, not to keep allocating more and more new sites. RVAG will now look to the call-in inquiry presided over by a professional planning inspector to provide a more objective assessment of the large amounts of evidence our group has submitted over the past year”.