We meet a Wolverhampton Councillor who shares his concern for the site of a listed house in Tettenhall, as the council call a halt to work as tons of soil and rubble is dumped on site.
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00:00Hi, I'm Councillor Sohel Corn and we're standing on Avenue House on Clifton Road, two old nursing homes.
00:10So this building here, it's listed isn't it Sohel?
00:13Yeah this one's listed, I don't believe that one isn't and it also sits within the conservation area.
00:19So what's your concern here? There's been a bit of work going on hasn't there?
00:24A lot of rubble, a lot of soil brought onto site.
00:27Well we know, because residents contacted us from the last few weeks, concerned with what's going on here.
00:35There seem to have been thousands of tonnes worth of soil and concrete and contaminated, we don't know if it's contaminated soil being brought onto the site.
00:47So there's a, I understand there's a notice by the gate there, asking people to, anyone that's been doing work to cease work.
00:57Yes sir, the planning officers were informed and credit to them, the planning team came down, had a look at it, they were alarmed because there's no planning application.
01:07I'm not sure if there's some conversation, but a conversation isn't a formal planning application, a pre-app is just initial start and a conversation that you have between a developer and the planning department.
01:19There wasn't, they were alarmed with what's gone on, this needs to be investigated and looked at and they've put an order seized, I think it's 52 days initially to find out and they're going to investigate what's gone on here.
01:31And it's a bit, it's not dead straight forward just trying to find out who owns it, is it? It was owned by a developer but we think it's been sold on to another developer.
01:38But sometimes there's a bit of a delay in the land registry kind of flashing that up.
01:42I think so, we're not 100% sure and I'm not privy to that information. The previous developers had emailed us councillors, myself, Councillor Uday Singh, Councillor Bob Maddox about potentially developing this land, which was a start.
01:57But as I've stated multiple times, it's a conservation area, there's a local neighbourhood plan here, there's residents here, there's planning law, legislation, I think English heritage might be involved.
02:07So it's not straightforward.
02:09So what would you like to see happen here then? I'm presuming this listed building behind, we need to keep that and make sure that doesn't end up going.
02:18Yeah absolutely, but with any sort of development that you have of an area like this, what needs to happen is it has to be in keeping with the local landscape, it has to be fitting with the environment that's in and also we have laws in place to protect listed buildings.
02:35So this has to be kept, but there has to be a conversation and a plan in place to be able to develop it in keeping with the surroundings that it's in.
02:43Hey, just show us where some of the land has been dumped, the soil's been dumped here.
02:47Well you can see some of it here and it seems like there's been some backfilling that's been excavating or backfilling down here onto this land.
02:55It's all a conservation area, it's protected, in essence it's protected land.
03:01And this is the old driveway isn't it to the to the house back in the back in the day.
03:05It's the gatehouse down here.
03:06Yeah, it's almost like they're backfilling it to create extra, well I don't know, extra plot possibly, we don't know.
03:12But either way, it shouldn't be going on without permission should it?
03:16No, I mean look, in any development you need to have, especially in a conservation area, it's a conservation area for a reason.
03:26You've got a protected building there, you've got a conservation area here, you've got residents that live around here.
03:32You can't go and start developing on land without the appropriate permission.
03:36Okay.
03:37So this is the planning, the official notice, which the planning officer Vijay Kool from the City of Wolfhampton Council came and served on the developers.