Firm 'bent over backwards to satisfy neighbours' says Luton councillor as retrospective planning approval awarded

Monitoring dust for nearly a decade has also failed to produce evidence that the firm is blighting the lives of a group of Luton residents, councillors were told.

Complaints about the Ground Construction Limited (GCL) site at Toddington Road, Luton, have been voiced twice at meetings of Luton Borough Council's development control committee.

The Welwyn Garden City-based company was seeking retrospective planning permission to make concrete building parts for the third time.

Residents protested they could no longer use their gardens or have doors and windows open after GCL began to make concrete building parts at the site.

But they were absent from last week's development control committee, held via Skype.

Labour Limbury councillor Rob Roche asked whether the residents even knew the meeting was taking place.

“How we can say it’s not having a detrimental effect when we can’t clarify whether the dust is coming from the site or not,” he explained.

“The report says we can’t tell unless there’s a lot of money spent.”

Labour Northwell councillor Anne Donelon said: “This just doesn’t sit very comfortably. The residents are saying there are these clouds of dust. I won’t be able to vote for it.”

GCL supplies mainly cranes to building sites around the UK from its Toddington Road site.

The firm’s last application was refused because of a failure to submit a noise assessment, as well as the visual impact of the caterpillar crawler crane, which has since been removed from the site.

The committee deferred the plans in February to see whether dust affecting neighbouring properties was from GCL’s activities.

But Environmental Protection ruled that a "prohibitively expensive investigation" would be needed to find this out, according to planning officer Abi Chapman.

The council’s residential regularity manager, Joanne Nelson, said: “We’ve undertaken extensive monitoring of this employment site since 2012 and never experienced excessive noise or dust.

Retrospective planning permission was then granted for the continued use of the site to make building and construction parts in concrete.

Labour Round Green councillor Mark Rivers said: “The owners have pretty much bent over backwards at times to satisfy the neighbours.

“Environmental protection hasn’t witnessed any statutory nuisance.

“We’re not here just to represent the residents. We’re here to make a legal opinion about what’s the rightful use of that site.”

Councillor Dave Taylor, chairman of the meeting, agreed, saying: “We don’t make planning decisions on emotions. We make decisions on their planning merits.”