Filton Airfield arena worry as 1,100 homes approved

Plans for 1,100 homes south of Filton Airfield have secured outline planning permission despite concerns that a new concert arena could be built close by.

South Gloucestershire Council approved the developer Persimmon's plan to build on the 133-acre site off Fishpool Hill.

Malaysian investment firm YTL is hoping Bristol City Council will allow it to turn Brabazon hangars into an arena.

Councillors said the housing estate needed to be "future-proofed" against any potential issues from the arena.

Committee chairman Colin Hunt said: "It is vitally important that we get to the bottom of this.

"We are going to be the ones affected mainly by the transport issues and the car parking and goodness knows what, so we should be looking at this now before we go jumping into saying 'Yes this is fine, it sounds nice that there's going to be a big arena, that's going to be no problem'."

Planning officers told the committee council highways engineers were "fully involved in the arena discussions".

About a quarter of the Persimmon Homes development, which forms part of the wider 5,700-home Cribbs Patchway New Neighbourhood, will be affordable housing.

Councillors initially approved the scheme in 2014, but it has been severely delayed partly because of disputes between the developer and Ashfield Land, which owns part of the site.

The meeting agreed an extension to a section 106 agreement, in which money from the applicants is used to pay for local infrastructure, the Local Democracy Reporting Service added.