Plans for 1,200 green belt homes rejected again
BBCPlans for up to 1,200 homes and spaces for businesses on green belt land have been turned down by a local authority.
The development in Fellgate had been rejected by South Tyneside Council before, at planning meeting last September.
Since then the council had said it would fall in line with the government's plans to accelerate housebuilding and make it easier to build on what it describes as "low-quality green belt land".
However, in a sometimes stormy meeting in South Shields Town Hall on Thursday morning, the plans were rejected by 27 councillors to 23.
South Tyneside Alliance councillor Paul Brenen called the plans a "disgrace and betrayal of the people of South Tyneside".
Labour councillor Geraldine Kilgour told the meeting she was putting "community before politics" and would vote against because "the plan isn't palatable".
But Labour's Alison Strike said voting for the plan would put councillors "in the driving seat in your own borough".
Prior to the meeting, opponent Dave Green from Save the Fellgate Green Belt said: "We should want to save this beautiful piece of land. Losing this would be extremely detrimental to the area as a whole.
"Congestion is already very bad round here, and this would only add to that, and this land continuously floods. Even today there is surface water on the ground."
The current publication draft of the borough's Local Plan, which has been subject to two statutory public consultations, proposes to remove 5% of land from South Tyneside's green belt, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
Nearly 3,000 people signed a petition in the hopes of blocking the plans.