Social housing planned next to M4 near Bristol where residents will ‘breathe in pollution’

Specially insulated windows and walls are planned in the 30 new homes but there are still concerns about residents using their gardens having to hear deafening traffic.

LiveWest, a housing association, has been granted planning permission from South Gloucestershire Council to build 30 homes north-east of Bristol, in between Winterbourne and Hambrook. The housing estate is on the Old Gloucester Road, near Beacon Lane.

The site is currently used for pasture land, and straddles the M4. Fences and trees will be installed to mitigate the noisy motorway. The plans were approved by councillors on the strategic sites delivery committee on Wednesday, October 1.

Sally Davis, planning director at Avison Young, said: “The scheme will make a meaningful contribution to local housing needs, particularly affordable housing. LiveWest seeks to provide high quality, affordable housing to benefit local families and people.”

The homes would be split into a few terraces and a small apartment block. The plans also include a children’s play area and allotments. Developers would install specialist insulation into the homes to lessen the noise from the motorway, and acoustic fences next to the gardens, as well as a woodland buffer.

Liberal Democrat Councillor Tristan Clark said: “Obviously it’s important for social housing tenants who move in that their children can play in the garden. All the plots further to the south have a huge mass of screening to give a degree of audible screening. But the three at the north end of the site, I’m slightly concerned will be less desirable for tenants to use their gardens.”

A pavement would be built along the Old Gloucester Road, and the speed limit would be reduced from 40 miles per hour to 30. As well as noise from the motorway, another concern was the dirty air from polluting vehicles which residents would have to breathe.

Conservative Cllr Paul Hughes added: “I’m very concerned about this because in South Glos we’ve been very excited about air pollution. I get that they’ve put mitigations with triple glazing and new types of standards to make the house air-tight. But when you’re outside and the wind is blowing, they’re going to get an awful lot of pollution coming from the motorway.

“There’s nearly always traffic jams, practically every day of the week. That wouldn’t be the place that I would want to go and live. Go there at 4am and see the trucks going down that road from Northern Ireland taking meat to Germany and all the rest of it. It’s relentless and those people have got to breathe that in.”