Councillors have unanimously agreed to grant planning permission for 224 new houses and a 75-bed care home in Kenilworth.

Homes England was last night (June 16) given the green light for the development at the former Leyes Lane school site.

The developer has already been given permission to flatten the site and has bought the land from Warwick District Council (WDC).

The local authority's planning committee had a lengthy discussion over the application, with multiple issues raised by councillors.

Cllr Richard Dickson asked for reassurances construction traffic would not pose a risk on local roads.

"I am concerned not just about the safety on Leyes Lane, but on a number of other junctions," he said.

"What reassurance can you give that the traffic assessment has looked at the impact - bearing in mind that Dalehouse Lane is closed for 14 months at least, and Crewe Lane at the best of times is dangerous?

"They are in close proximity to this site."

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Chris Lancett from the highways team responded: "Those junctions that were identified as being impacted all have mitigation identified as part of the local plan.

"Those mitigation schemes are shown to mitigate this development impact as well as the wider development sites.

"In terms of the closure of Dalehouse Lane we wouldn't have considered that as part of the traffic model because it is only a temporary closure.

"As part of the modelling we can only test things that are a standard scenario."

Some 69 local residents had objected to the application, with multiple issues around traffic, massing and local infrastructure raised.

Kenilworth councillor James Kennedy also asked whether the issues experienced at other developments across the town would impact how this site would be managed.

"Delivery of infrastructure has been raised by a number of speakers," he said.

" In particular I refer sadly to our experience of the new developments, firstly with the new school where the infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists was only delivered about six months after the school was opened creating all sorts of problems and dangers.

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"At Kenilworth gate, Kenilworth councillors are very familiar that there is no pedestrian or cycling access to a whole group of new houses that were erected, for many many months after they were completed.

"And the ongoing problems which we have with the spine road in the land east of Kenilworth, which looks to be delayed, and delayed and delayed which creates huge traffic problems, as well as being dangerous.

"Can we have some assurance that through this site we learn some of those lessons and make sure the infrastructure is put in before the houses are occupied, so we don't have the ridiculous position of pedestrians having to run across very busy 40mph roads in order to get to their houses on foot."

Sandip Sahota, business development manager, replied: "Those details will come in and we will consider them.

"Having the lessons from previous developments, we will consider what is put forward to us is appropriate, and if not we will go back and tighten that."

Planning permission was granted unanimously.