Overdevelopment fears sink plans for extra flats on Surrey high street
Plans to squeeze eight more flats onto a corner site in Shepperton high street have been thrown out.
Neighbours said the four-storey block would tower over their homes and leave them in darkness.
Developers had wanted to add an extra floor and a rear extension to the building at the junction with Manor Farm Avenue, currently home to shops on the ground floor and six flats above.
The changes would have brought the total number of flats to 14.
Members of a Spelthorne Borough Council planning committee threw out the scheme at a meeting on October 15, citing concerns about the building’s height, loss of privacy and daylight, and its impact on neighbours.
Glenis Tellet, who lives directly behind the building on Manor Farm Avenue, told councillors her kitchen and breakfast room would lose up to 30 per cent of their daylight – breaching national guidelines.
“This will be out of proportion and the scale of this development will completely dominate our house,” she said.
“This is my everyday family space and under these proposals it would become darker, gloomier and more dependent on artificial lighting.”
She also said the block would sit just 17.5 metres from her home, well below the council’s usual 30-metre guidance for three-storey buildings facing habitable rooms.
Planning officers recommended approving the scheme, saying it made “efficient use of land” in a town centre close to Shepperton Station.
But residents described the plans as “overdevelopment” that would ruin the character of the area.
The developer’s agent, Joyce Moyer, said the design had been revised several times after council feedback, with top-floor terraces removed and the new storey set back to reduce its impact.
She argued the eight new homes would help meet local housing needs and that all statutory bodies, including highways and drainage, had raised no objections.
But councillors were not convinced. Several said the building would look out of place next to the two-storey homes on Manor Farm Avenue and could set a worrying precedent for taller blocks creeping down the road.
Others questioned the shortfall in parking spaces, warning it could worsen congestion near the nearby school.
Cllr Maureen Attewell, ward councillor, took issue with the planning officer’s report and said residents’ concerns were not properly addressed.
She also expressed fears the ‘overdevelopment’ would “set a precedent” for future applications in the borough.