A plan to build 120 homes on the old gasworks site beside the Merrow goes to the council's planning committee next Tuesday, eleven years after the last gas holder was emptied.

The site has been fenced off since 2015. The iron frame of the largest holder still stands over it, and the developer, Merrow Quay Homes, wants to keep it: the plans put a small park inside the ring of columns, with the flats arranged around it.

What is proposed

Of the 120 homes, 36 would be offered at social rent, which is fewer than the forty percent the council's own policy asks for on large sites. The developer says the cost of cleaning the ground, which is thick with tar from a century of making gas from coal, makes the full share impossible.

"We have opened every trial pit on this site," said the company's planning director, Ruth Okonedo. "We know exactly what is down there, and so does the council. It is a lot."

We know exactly what is down there, and so does the council. It is a lot.

The objections

Residents of the terraces on Foundry Lane have lodged 214 objections, most of them about traffic: the only road in passes the primary school. Others want the holder taken down altogether. "It is a monument to the smell we grew up with," wrote one.

The council's planning officers have recommended approval, with conditions on the school road and on the timing of the clean-up. The committee meets at six in the council chamber. The public gallery seats forty.