Lane End: Plans for new homes on ‘Golden Guff’

Shanly Homes has submitted to Bucks Council an outline application relating to land known locally as “Golden Guff”, south of Finings Road, in Lane End.

Plans outline the ‘redevelopment of the land currently used for cattle grazing to provide 15 properties (48 per cent affordable)’.

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These include four three-bed, three four-bed, and one five-bed market houses; two three-bed and three two-bed houses, and two one-bed flats (affordable).    

A new vehicle access off Finings Road, and 40 parking spaces are also proposed.

It will also involve a ‘15-metre landscape buffer on the western boundary with Fining Wood and another to the south of the site’.

Access to a water tower will be preserved, documents indicate.

Site layout 

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Shanly Homes was also granted permission to redevelop the nearby former Essex Works site in 2014.

This new scheme, which is subsequent to a pre-application meeting with Wycombe District Council in September 2020, received considerable public pushback online.

The site is allocated for residential development in the Wycombe District Local Plan.

The Plan also states it should ‘preserve the setting of the Lane End Conservation Area and the setting of the nearby Grade II-Listed White Gable Cottage’.

Many objectors also cited the “indicative capacity for the site is ten dwellings” – not 15.

Other objectors fear the removal of trees and ancient woodland (Fining Wood); the creation of a “dangerous access” to a “busy” Finings Road; an impact on neighbour privacy, particularly Oakwood Place; and “residential creep”.

“It is likely the developers will try to build more houses in the southern end of the site,” wrote Mrs Anna Bacon.

They added: “The Government is now stating that where possible, housing should be built on brown sites, not Green Belt or AONB and are planning to make appropriate changes to ensure this.

“The council should take this into account as there are several unused and run-down brown sites locally that could be built on.”

Ms Claire Tyrrell wrote: “There are disused offices, unused industrial buildings - why are you allowing buildings on a green field?  

“This is detrimental to the woodland, the neighbours, the church and the environment.

“The current proposal does not comply with the council’s own environmental statements in the Local Plan.”

Golden Guff in Lane End

Campaigners from Lane End were furious when plans to use Golden Guff in the Local Plan were pushed through by councillors in 2019. 

“Senior citizens of Lane End recall playing in the field as children, and we have grown used to the sight of Lacey’s prize-winning cows ambling to and fro as they masticate its rich grasses to produce the dairy goods sold in the Farm Shop which we enjoy,” wrote another objector of the new plans.

“The field acts as a village bookend to Finings Wood and as a wildlife corridor and upland natural soakaway, feeding surrounding ponds, streams and the associated flora and fauna.

“Instead, we see the horrors of creeping urbanisation around us.”

“Careful consideration has been given to the proposed density of the development,” a planning statement reads.

“It is considered that the proposed 15 dwellings sit comfortably on the site as well as making the transition from the existing built form to the countryside beyond.”

The applicant is now awaiting a decision from the council.

To view and comment on the plans, use planning portal ref: 21/07913/OUT.

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