Extension of Waterside Holiday Park, Weymouth to be decided

Objectors claim the extra holiday homes will damage coastline views and put wildlife at risk.

Dorset councillors will be asked to decide the application at a planning meeting on Tuesday February 1st with a recommendation to approve.

Planning officer say the revised scheme would cause no harm to nearby homes or the landscape and complies with the Local Plan.

The original application has been downsized in the light of criticism. Weymouth town council was among the initial objectors, but dropped its stance after the scheme was reduced in size.

More than ninety people have written to Dorset Council – 72 objecting and 20 in support.

Waterside Holiday Park

Ward councillor Tony Ferrari is among those against the expansion. He says the extra holiday homes will add to traffic problems in the area and claims that the current size of the site is already more than the infrastructure of the area can bear.

He also says it will be damaging to wildlife by closing the gap between the end of the park and Ewleaze Farm campsite to the east.

“Wildlife policy emphasises the value of corridors to allow movement between separate undeveloped areas. This scheme closes off the last corridor to the fields and the foreshore to the east of the Riviera hotel. In the summer particularly this will now be an isolated wildlife island,” he said.

Many of those in support said the extension will provide local jobs and boost the economy as well as offer additional holiday accommodation at a time when more people are having staycations.

Waterside says it wants to add extra timber lodges in fields towards the north east of its existing complex –  immediately adjoining the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and the Heritage Coast. The application also includes a play area, parking and a pond.

The proposal was initially for 31 timber lodges with green roofs and 25 timber pods with green or shingle roofs within a portion of a field south of the existing holiday park.

The amended application has removed the timber pods and now shows 30 timber lodges.

Dorset AONB officers said it was “highly questionable” that addition landscaping and planting would counterbalance the development, as the company claimed, and said that any change from open fields, some now used for horses, would adversely affect views into, out and across the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The AONB has maintained its objection, despite the changes and argues that when the campsite at Eweleaze and the PGL site further east are taken into consideration there would be a “near continuous swathe of visitor based development that clearly contrasts with the character of the ‘exceptional undeveloped coastline’ of the AONB.”

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Dorset Council’s senior landscape architect has maintained that even the amended proposals will have “an adverse impact on landscape and visual character and quality” significantly adding to the cumulative effect of permanent and seasonal holiday accommodation in the surrounding landscape.

The Dorset Campaign to Protect Rural England group has objected strongly to the proposals on England’s only natural World Heritage Site: “This development of the Waterside Holiday park will cause significant damage,” said the group’s objection, a view supported by Weymouth Civic Society.

The area planning meeting takes place at 10am on Tuesday February 1st and can be viewed online.