MORE than a hundred homes are to be built on Duchy-owned parcels of land south of St Georges Road and either side of the Dorchester bypass and railway line.

The development, which will include 30 per cent 'affordable' homes, has been talked about for three years.

On Tuesday a Dorset Council area planning committee unanimously gave the scheme the go-ahead.

One of the four paddock plots is next to Thomas Hardy's Max Gate home and runs downhill parallel with Syward Road to the rail line.

The four plots are separated by both the bypass, which runs above houses in a section of the area, and the Weymouth to Waterloo rail line. A fifth plot of land, on the other side of St George's Road will be maintained as protected mitigation wetland.

The four sites will be adjacent to current housing developments in St Georges Road, St Georges Close, Syward Road and Close, Friars Close, Long Bridge Way, Eddison Avenue and Louds View.

Access to the sites will be via new road junctions – on St Georges Road and Syward Road with another access from Friars Close, which some resident in the close and in adjoining Louds Piece, had objected to.

The homes will be a combination of coach house apartments, located above garages, and two, three and four bedroom terrace or detached houses, mostly two storey.

The planning application acknowledged that with the bypass and the railway nearby some of the homes would find it relatively noisy with measures taken to reduce noise – including screening with a 2metre high boundary fence to create an 'acoustic buffer' where noise levels are at their greatest. Some noise reduction is also planned inside properties where volumes likely to be highest.

Said the document: "Where coach houses are unavoidably placed close to the road, a non-habitable corridor space is used as a noise buffer for the habitable internal rooms, particularly bedrooms to ensure that their noise levels are kept as low as possible. Windows overlooking the A35 are minimised across the site, and where they are necessary to provide daylighting, these are inoperable, with ventilation provided by other means, to prevent excessive noise ingress."

The application acknowledges that the development will have some effect on the wider setting of Max Gate, operated by the National Trust, but concludes: "this change would not materially affect the experience of the house from the surrounding area, nor the experience within its grounds. On this basis it is concluded that the proposed development would not result in any harm to the significance of the house."

Dorset councillors heard on Tuesday that most of the existing trees and hedgerows will be kept with additional landscaping used within the four areas.