If you live in the mature suburbs of Allestree you would have received through your letterbox, at the beginning of March, one of our leaflets inviting you to an advisory and consultation meeting on the 11th March at St Edmund’s Church Hall, to learn all about our proposal to apply for extension to Allestree Conservation Area and to gain your approval.

Thank you to our local newspaper, the meeting was widely announced over several editions and subsequently comprehensively reported on both in the Derby Evening Telegraph and the Allestree Messenger.

The meeting was attended by 78 residents who were provided with a warts and all review of what owning a property within a conservation area entails, by one of the Country’s leading conservation experts Geoffrey Lane.

We are delighted to report that the show of hands at the meeting indicating approval of our proposal was almost unanimous as were the returned ballot papers we received. These are available for inspection if anyone wishes to view them.

 

The advice to seek extension to the existing Allestree Conservation Area was received by Allestree Preservation Group, from several well qualified sources, as the most positive way of protecting our mature suburbs from demolition, to be replaced by high density new housing, commercial properties and characterless and inappropriate developments.

If your house became included within the Conservation Area it would impose some conditions on any alterations you may wish to make in the future. The benefits, however, would provide you with far greater protection from the possibility of the demolition of neighbouring or nearby properties to build high density housing or commercial properties. The examples we have already witnessed being the permission granted for demolition of two houses on Duffield Road, to be replaced by two blocks of apartments and five town houses, or even worse, fifty five houses and a sixty bed care home on Kings Croft.

 

Funding the Assessment

APG submitted an application to the Neighbourhood Board, for assistance to fund the cost of the professional assessment, which has to be conducted before consideration by the Local Planning Authority can be given, to an extension to the Conservation Area. We are delighted to inform you that the application was successful and APG were awarded £3,250 which will be a major contribution towards the cost of the assessment to be carried out by consultant Geoffrey Lane. Much of the research work has been, and will continue to be, carried out by APG Committee Members whose freely given time will dramatically reduce the cost of submitting the assessment.

The areas to be included in any potential extension cannot be determined until the assessment, which is likely to consider all of the areas of Allestree built in the early part of the twentieth century, has been undertaken. This is one of the major factors determined by the assessment as well as the credibility and merit of the application itself.

We will keep you updated by this website of developments with this programme. Thank you for your ongoing support and your determination to preserve the very special character of Allestree.