Developer tight-lipped on future for green field site near Chesterfield as campaigners celebrate homes withdrawal

Building company the Pegasus Group is remaining tight-lipped about any future plans for the site, off Coupe Lane, between the villages of Old Tupton and Holmgate.

Concerns about flooding, traffic and GP surgery capacity prompted dozens of residents to object to the proposed development, which had been resubmitted to North East Derbyshire District Council last summer.

Campaign spokesperson Brian Lever said it was a ‘great relief’ for people across the Tupton and Clay Cross area to see the back of the plans.

“Three hundred houses means 700 to 1,000 cars, and almost all the area's everyday services: already overstretched doctors' surgeries, dentists and pharmacists; shops including supermarket; fast food outlets; secondary school, entertainment. sport and gyms, are all either on or on the other side of the A61,” he said.

"Even the local Holmgate Primary School cannot grow, so all extra children would have had to be taxied up, down or across the Derby Road twice a day.

"Everyone going to work must go either east, via one of only two junctions onto the A61, or west along 19th Century country lanes that are all steep and single-track in parts.”

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Brian said thousands of people living nearby had been ‘kept in a state of anxiety’ for almost five years, given the history of the site and previous applications to North East Derbyshire District Council.

"Coupe Lane has marked part of the district's Settlement Boundary for many decades,” he said.

"That's the line, drawn into the North East Derbyshire Local Plan, that should protect the characteristic ‘Peak Fringe’ landscape that stretches north to south for miles just west of the A61, from more housing estates.

"We all need some quiet countryside and it's boundary should not be pushed further away from us.”

A spokesperson for the Pegasus Group declined to comment on the reasons for the withdrawal of the plans.

A letter of withdrawal to the council, written by Gary Lees, executive director of Pegasus Group, did not give any reasons for the decision.

Resident Carole Johnson, who has also been involved in the battle against the development, described the result as a great ‘community effort’.

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