Wellington Road Flats Approved: 21 Social Rent Homes

Twenty-one council flats for social rent will be built on the empty corner of Wellington Road and Station Road, opposite Wokingham station. Councillors approved the plans at the planning committee on Wednesday 14 October (Wokingham Borough Council).

The council is both the applicant and the landlord. It will own and manage the block, and every flat will be let at social rent.

What has been approved

The officer report to the committee sets out the scheme (officer report, application 251621). It is a three-storey block on a vacant 0.23-hectare site. The flats are:

• 18 one-bedroom flats
• 1 one-bedroom flat designed for a wheelchair user
• 2 two-bedroom flats

The scheme is almost car-free. It has six parking spaces, two of them for disabled drivers and four for staff and visitors, plus 24 cycle spaces. A protected Poplar tree on the site will be felled. The council’s tree officers raised no objection, subject to replacement planting and landscaping.

The land was once meant for offices. Outline permission for two-storey offices and six flats was granted in the 1980s and renewed in 1990 and 1993, according to the planning history in the same report, but nothing was built. A 2019 application for 18 flats and a shop was withdrawn.

Who the flats are for

The council says the flats will go to “those with greatest need”, including care leavers and adults with support requirements. Its stated aim is to cut the number of people it has to house in placements outside the borough, which it says are often more expensive and disruptive.

Cllr Stephen Conway, the council leader, said the scheme would “reduce reliance on costly out‑of‑borough placements and make better use of public money”.

How it is paid for

The council lists four sources of money:

• developer contributions
• the government’s Brownfield Release Fund
• council borrowing
• a bid it intends to make to Homes England’s Affordable Homes Programme

Neither the release nor the committee report gives a total cost for the block.

What the objections were

Wokingham Town Council welcomed the affordable housing but objected to the design (Town Council comments). It said the building was too tall and bulky facing Park Road, would overlook homes there, and would push carers’ and visitors’ cars onto nearby streets.

Officers accepted one conflict with planning policy: the scheme does not pay the off-site open space contribution the borough normally asks for. They concluded the benefits outweighed it. We set out the full report, including the 66 and 41 responses in two rounds of consultation, in our preview of the meeting.

What happens next

Permission is subject to a legal agreement. Among other things it locks all 21 flats in as social rent and secures:

• £17,127 towards local healthcare
• £3,000 to improve the bus stop on Station Road
• £6,500 for parking restrictions, payable only if the parking management plan calls for them

If that agreement is not signed within six months of the meeting, officers can refuse the application. The council has not yet given a date for building work to start.

What it means for you

• If you are on the housing register, these flats will be let through the council’s own allocations, with priority for the groups it names above. There is nothing to apply for separately yet.
• If you live in Park Road or Wellington Road, conditions on the permission require a detailed construction management plan before work starts and limit construction working hours. Watch the planning register for the condition-discharge applications, which come before work starts.
• The two larger schemes at the same meeting, up to 850 homes at Priors Farm and 44 homes off Sun Lane in Riseley, had no published decision on the council’s committee record when we checked on 24 October, and the planning register was offline that morning. We will report both when the minutes appear.

More: Wokingham planning news.