Last week, Latona Leisure, the owners of the Mendip Lodge Hotel site on Bath Road, northern Frome, started site work on the development of 6 new detached houses on the southern part of the site, next to the three existing dwellings.

This is four months after withdrawing plans for further housing development across the majority of the former hotel site (see http://adamboyden.mycouncillor.org.uk/2012/09/20/housing-plans-withdrawn-for-former-mendip-lodge-hotel-site/)

The current development implements planning permission 2010/2498 for six detached houses, to extend the current block of three dwellings.   It was granted planning permission by Mendip District Council in December 2010, and the approved plans can be found online (http://www.mendip.gov.uk/CouncilService.asp?id=SX9452-A780E795&cat=91, or go to www.mendip.gov.uk, ‘Planning Application Search’ and enter the reference number 2010/2498).

A ‘reserved matters’ planning application (ref. 2013/0048) was submitted to Mendip District Council in January 2013, for approval of details of landscaping, drainage and materials, for the development.  Details of these proposals were not yet on Mendip’s website, and have not yet been approved, so I have asked the case officer to publish these as soon as possible …

Nick Gray, managing director of Latona Leisure, assures me that the neighbouring residents have been informed of the plans for the site, and that Latona still have plans for the remainder of the site in the near future.

The development will provide some much-needed housing in Frome. There are some visually important trees on site, and the neighbouring residents’ amenity, which need to be safeguarded in the development.  So I will be ‘keeping an eye on developments’…