HOUSING campaigners are preparing for 'last chance saloon' at a meeting on Thursday, March 19.

The final details for plans for a 148-house estate in Moulton will be discussed by councillors in Chester and have been recommended for approval.

The reserved matters application, submitted by Bovis Homes, includes details of appearance, landscaping, layout and scale.

Moulton Parish Council has objected to the proposal on the grounds of its concerns over the capability of planned drainage swales on the waterlogged site, construction traffic, affordable housing and the use of Section 106 funds, which a developer pays to a local authority for infrastructure improvements.

Plans for the estate, for land at Beehave Lane, were first submitted by Richborough Estates and won outline permission in October following an appeal.

Cllr Allan Aston, Moulton Parish Council's chairman, said: "This is last chance saloon, as it were."

One of the residents' biggest fears is the high water table on the 8.3-hectare site, which they say is frequently under water.

They fear that the swales planned for the housing estate, which are designed to hold excess water, will not be sufficient.

Margaret Newton, of Beehive Lane, said: "The swales shouldn't only be a bother and a worry to the people immediately here like me and my neighbour but to the playing fields, to the bungalows and certainly to all the new houses which have to be one metre above ground level.

"It will be the surrounding area that floods and their gardens."

A report put together for Cheshire West and Chester Council's (CWAC) strategic planning committee states that neither the Environment Agency or United Utilities objected to the plans at outline stage and states that an amended plan shows an increased number of drainage swales on the site.

It said: "This has been assessed by the council’s contracts and flooding engineer who has confirmed that the use and number of swales is acceptable from a drainage prospective.

"This can provided adequate storage capacity on site and to enable the control the rate of flow of surface water into the local drainage network."

The meeting takes place at CWAC's HQ building, in Chester, at 4pm on Thursday.