Fox Land and Property have submitted plans to Huntingdonshire District Council for 300 homes on land to the south of the garage on Gidding Road.

Scattered through the 24-acre development would be 120 affordable homes. There is a plan for a medical facility to be located on site and the developers say a community trust fund would be set up to be spent on other facilities that were needed.

The applicant's representatives, John Martin and Associates, say Sawtry Parish Council has refused to discuss what services might be needed to accompany the development.

One parish councillor, Larry Philips, spoke of his disapproval of the development.
He said: "I don't think it's an obvious place for the development at all.

"I think it's much too big for the village. There's not enough facilities, the schools will be over-crowded, the doctors will be oversubscribed, there will be too much traffic, I would not have thought the sewage system will cope. Other than that there's nothing wrong with it.

"Everybody knows there has to be more houses at some stage, but nobody envisaged a development as large as this.
"If the infrastructure was there Sawtry will develop. But not by 300 houses."

Sawtry Parish Council is to discuss the plans at a meeting on Wednesday, May 14. So far it has received 13 letters from residents expressing concerns about the plans.
Forty residents also wrote to the developers after a leaflet was sent out by them.

Under current district council planning policy, the development far exceeds the scale envisaged for Sawtry.

Development control manager Andy Moffat said: "With the exception of the Gidding Road frontage, the site is outside the village limits as defined in the Local Plan and is therefore designated as countryside, within which there is a presumption against new development with the exception of a small number of specific types of development. Even within the village limits, the Local Plan limits development in Sawtry to a maximum of 15 dwellings."

The council is currently devising a new planning strategy, based around a regional plan, which requires Huntingdonshire to provide a minimum of 11,200 homes between 2021.
So far 8,500 have been built or given planning permission. The new strategy when adopted in July 2009 is likely to suggest that developments in Sawtry are limited to 59 houses.

However, the applicants believe that the suitability of the site and national planning policy means their proposal should be granted and out of date, or net yet adopted, local guidance should not be followed.
>>The application can be viewed online at http://tiny.cc/f6XlS