Town councillors have repeated their "disappointment" in the way major planning applications have been handled around Kenilworth.

During a debate on the safety around Leamington Road - in which councillors unanimously backed a motion calling for faster action on improving the road outside the Kenilworth Gate housing estate - members at Kenilworth Town Council voiced their frustration at the fact new build homes are allowed to be bought and occupied before local infrastructure is in place.

Councillors said residents' needs are "subservient" to those of housing developers.

In the case of Kenilworth Gate, the outline planning application for 550 homes was first submitted in 2020, with smaller 'reserved matters' applications then submitted, breaking up the estate into chunks after the initial plans were signed off.

Since then, town councillors have been left repeatedly frustrated at the slow progress on the spine road through the centre of the development, the lack of community facilities and most recently the lack of a crossing on Leamington Road.

Speaking at the most recent town council meeting, Cllr Alix Dearing said she was "very disappointed" in the fact residents had been forced to battle for a crossing outside their new homes.

"We have had a number of other occasions when we have had similar things happening," she said. 

"Words fail me that we are here getting people to fill in petitions for what should be a really basic, solvable situation."

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Cllr Adrian Marsh added: "Sadly, the state of the roads and the road safety arrangements - not just on Leamington Road - is another example of the failings of professionals who should know better that when schemes are being planned, they have a duty of care to ensure that people are safe when they come to use the facilities in the town which they have moved to. 

"I think this emphasises the importance that organisations are held to account to ensure they deliver safety in the proper manner."

Over the past few years town councillors have also repeatedly objected to applications for major developments, saying they do not stick to the neighbourhood plan or the land east of Kenilworth brief - two major planning documents which govern how houses are supposed to be built.

And with Warwick District Council (WDC) and Stratford-on-Avon District Councils working together on a new South Warwickshire Local Plan which will govern how the area is developed over the next 25 years, members said lessons need to be learned from the new build estates in Kenilworth.

Cllr Andrew Milton explained: "Part of the problem here is the tactical way WDC have allowed the developments on the land east of Kenilworth to be carried out. 

"I understand it makes things easier for developers to break things up into parcels. 

"It doesn't make things easier for the residents of the town. 

"This planning application [Thickthorn] came to us in 2020, the anticipation at the time was that other applications for that land would follow and we would have better infrastructure, the spine road, the crossing. 

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"That is something district council, they have not been sharp in making sure there were conditions put on that first application to ensure that safe infrastructure was put in before those houses could be lived in."

Meanwhile, Cllr Richard Dickson pointed to the "obvious failures in the planning system".

"We need this issue [Leamington Road] to be resolved, but we need to ensure that no similar future issues occur as well, both with the existing local plan that is being worked out, and also in whatever is in the draft local plan to be adopted hopefully to be adopted at the end of next year," he said. 

"This is how developers behave, they get something agreed and they come back and back again and change it. 

"The residents' safety or the school students' safety gets made subservient to the needs of the developers. 

"That is not an acceptable situation."