Plans from Easton Bavents Ltd to relocate Easton Lane, near Southwold, houses rejected by East Suffolk Council due to landscape and size concerns

Plans to relocate four houses lost to coastal erosion on the outskirts of Southwold have been refused due to landscape and size concerns.

East Suffolk Council rejected the plans from Easton Bavents Ltd to build new houses on its land after three cottages, on land off Eastern Lane, were lost to receding cliffs.

One of the cottages it planned to relocate still stands – which was a point of contention between the planners and the applicants.

Easton Bavents Ltd said ‘The Warren’ would be lost to erosion within 20 years, while planners said there was insufficient evidence for this and it was ‘likely to remain in-situ well beyond a period of 20 years’.

They argued it could potentially still be standing at the end of the Shoreline Management Plan, date of 2105.

The site Easton Bavents Ltd wanted to build its new ‘U-Build’ modular houses on is to the north-east of Reydon, and is a former agricultural field ‘within open countryside’.

Planners said the properties which were lost to erosion, demolished in 2019, were ‘relatively modest’, while the proposed new properties are ‘significantly larger’, which was against planning policy for replacement dwellings.

They also said, as the planned site was in open countryside, the scale and form of the development would cause harm to a protected area of National Landscape.

They considered the proposed new dwellings to be ‘randomly located out on a limb’ in open countryside, and attempts to mitigate the disruption to the character of the area would be unsuccessful.

David Beavan, ward councillor for the area, twice objected to the proposals.

He recognised the owners had lost rental income from the houses, but said an area of old turkey sheds on the land, which are owned by a different party to Easton Bavents Ltd, was the obvious site for this sort of replacement development.

Cllr Beavan stood by his original objection to building houses on a field in the National Landscape area.

He also mentioned the applicants had been offered plots on the Copperwheat Avenue development, a 220-house project in Reydon.

The applicants could buy plots for £1 each and develop properties there, provided they did not sell the newly built dwellings within a 10 year period.

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Easton Bavents Ltd was approached for comment.