More than 60 new homes will be built in a village despite ‘widespread concern’ it will lead to more sewage flowing into a nearby brook.

Wychavon District Council’s planning committee approved a planning application to build 62 new homes off Church Road in Crowle at the second time of asking after delaying a decision last month to allow for more talks with Severn Trent Water over the potential for the village to become overrun with sewage.

The planning committee agreed to push back a decision to give the council more time to make sure Crowle’s sewage system was fit for purpose before any new housing was built.

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Cllr Margaret Rowley said the amount of sewage discharged into Bow Brook from Crowle meant it was the “worst polluted area in Wychavon.”

“Raw sewage was flowing into Bow Brook every other day on average in 2021 for a total of 3,834 hours. That isn’t something that can be tolerated,” she said at the planning meeting in Pershore on August 17.

“And to just have mitigation against these extra houses does not solve the problem.”

As she did last month, Cllr Rowley called for the plan to be rejected but without the support of another councillor, her motion was never put to a vote.

The committee then approved the plan by Piper Homes by seven votes to two with two abstentions.

A total of 40 objections were made against the plan by villagers in Crowle before the meeting.

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Crowle parish councillor Ian Boden told the planning committee that the village had no objections to 40 new homes, as included in the key South Worcestershire Development Plan (SWDP) planning blueprint, but had issues with more saying 62 was “far too many.”

“Taking together with the 25 [homes] already delivered, the 12 approved earlier this year, and the 30 approved last month … that rate and pace of growth cannot be considered to be sustainable development.”

Fellow parish councillor Stephen Dunne said the sewage system in the village was already “woefully under capacity” and the “widespread concern” in Crowle had yet to be addressed.

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He said the village wanted tighter guarantees that building new homes would not cause more pollution to run into nearby Bow Brook as “real harm” was already being caused to the environment because of discharging sewage.

Ahead of the meeting last month, the council’s planning officers had advised the plan was given the green light along with a condition that Severn Trent Water was expected to make sure a proper sewage system was built before half of the homes were filled.

Spitfire Homes had its plan to build 30 homes on land less than half a mile away from Froxmere Road off the village’s Church Road backed by the committee at the same meeting.