DEVELOPERS insisted that plans for a housing development bigger than the village it would be built in were sustainable and supported by infrastructure.

Harrow Estates Plc had their chance to call expert witnesses during the second day of a four-day inquiry, appealing against the decision to deny outline planning permission for the 340 home development in Sudbrook.

Miss Morag Ellis QC, representing Harrow Estates, called Mike Axon, a founding director of Vectos Transport Planners, as an expert witness at the appeal, led by planning inspector Emyr Jones at Wales 2 Business Park, Magor.

Mr Axon insisted: "There's no transport reason to reject this development and good transport reason to encourage it."

Earlier in the day, Sudbrook resident Paul Watkins said: "For me as a resident it's quite worrying the amount of traffic in and out of the village with only one entrance into the village."

But Mr Axon focused on the walking and cycling access to the homes, arguing there was access to the Severn Tunnel Junction train station via the Welsh Coast Path.

He also said the housing development, on the site of the former St Regis Sudbrook Paper Mill, would be environmentally beneficial: "It would take away the potential of environmentally harmful HGVs that could arise from reuse of the site."

Richard Brown, representing Monmouthshire County Council, disputed that the development would be well suited by transport links, pointing out that to get to Newport on the bus at the moment from the site, passengers would have to catch the bus at 8.05am, arriving at 10.02am. They would then have to leave at 2pm to get back home.

Harrow Estates said they would invest up to £300,000 in improvements to bus services but Mr Brown questioned the whether this would be sustainable.

Mr Axon said microsimulation modelling and mathematical models had shown there would be "no significant adverse effect" on traffic in and out of the village as a result of the development.

He also said a coordinator hired by Harrow Estates would facilitate "walking buses" and "cycle trains", in which children could meet to walk or cycle to school in groups supervised by an adult.

He added: "In terms of secondary school, our site location is closer to the secondary school than, for instance, the national average for travel to secondary school."

Proceeding.