Scale and Impact

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We appreciate that the detailed site assessment work has resulted in a decrease in the total number of village housing due to environmental and access restrictions, against the backdrop of a likely increase in the district housing requirement as evidenced by the recently published Coventry & Warwickshire joint Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA), the council should approach this reduction with caution.

Sites must be deliverable therefore access restrictions are important considerations and can be an absolute bar to development, environmental constraints are more objective and must be balanced against the requirement to meet the full needs of a growing population.

A general comment that the housing sites seem to have been whittled down on environmental grounds where amelioration by planting or lower density of development could have provided satisfactory development.

scale and impact - this is difficult again to remain positive with HS2 ploughing through our village. However, the strain on the following:
TRAFFIC AND CONGESTION
Red Lane is a dangerous road, children have been knocked off their bikes on the bends with little footpaths and concerned over the increased traffic of proposed houses for this and the speed on the surrounding roads.
SCHOOLS
we have a lovely village school which is bursting with no extra space, this would need to be addressed as new houses people would prefer to keep their kids local and not sure of the space at the school

PARAGRAPH 4.10 LEVEL OF HOUSING GROWTH
1.1 These submissions relate to the proposed level of housing provision to be accommodated within the District's most sustainable village locations.
1.2 The Council acknowledge at paragraph 2.13 of its consultation report that its interim level of growth of 683 dwellings per annum set out within the Revised Development Strategy (June 2013) may be revised pending the findings of the Joint Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA). This SHMA has now been published and, whilst its findings have yet to be tested, it concludes that the assessed housing need for the District is 720 dwellings per annum.
1.3 Over a plan period to 2031, the interim level of growth is therefore some 740 dwellings less than the most up-to-date evidence of assessed need. The SHMA also provides up-to-date evidence as to affordability, the numbers of newly forming households in need of affordable housing, as well as market signals.
1.4 The Council will therefore need to reconsider its future housing requirement figure in light of this evidence and the possible need to accommodate housing requirements from other authorities under the Duty to Co-operate. Furthermore, it will also need to test the implications of higher housing figures than that indicated in the Revised Development Strategy, and reconsider the level of growth proposed for the most sustainable villages. Bloor Homes have made submissions to the Council previously as to the need and potential for the rural area to accommodate higher levels of growth than envisaged within the Revised Development Strategy.
1.5 In this context, it is of concern that the Preferred Options set out within this consultation report have failed to even achieve the housing provisions made to the most sustainable villages (1,000 dwellings in total) as part of the interim level of growth within the Revised Development Strategy. The statement within paragraph 4.10 of this consultation report that the lower figure now proposed of 835 dwellings reflects environmental and access restrictions will need to be robustly demonstrated if this is to be taken forward into the Draft Local Plan and found 'sound'.
1.6 The Council will be aware of the relevant test within paragraph 14 of the National Planning Policy Framework (referred to as the 'Framework'). This requires that objectively assessed needs are met unless any adverse impacts of doing so would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed against the policies of the Framework taken as a whole.
1.7 In respect of its land interests not allocated as Preferred Options, Bloor Homes do not consider the Council has demonstrated within its evidence base that the adverse impacts of their development would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits. Moreover, having regard to paragraphs 17 and 70 of the Framework and the requirement to allocate land of lesser environmental or amenity value where consistent with other policies of the Framework, Bloor Homes do not consider the Preferred Options identified in some of the villages represent the most appropriate when assessed against their alternative land interests which are more consistent with the policies of the Framework. The evidence to support these statements is set out in within separate submissions.

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I am responding to the above consultation by email as, despite the consultation period being extended to Friday 24 January, the website consultation process was shut down on 20 January and I am not, therefore able to use that mechanism which would have been my preferred mechanism. Also as a result I have no information on the questions that the council are seeking consultation on and I have therefore responded in a free form fashion.

1. the plans seem to place great emphasis on the fact that the demographics of the rural community are both different from the urban community and have changed over the period 2001-2011. I do not disagree with this but I note that this has been the case since the mid 18th century in England and can not, therefore, be a logical and rationale basis for basing housing proposals on.
2. the plans refer to concerns about the impact of developments on local infrastructure but, certainly for Burton Green, contain no practical proposals to resolve these issues; this increases the likeyhood of development such as that in Balsall Common a few years ago where local medical and dental facilities were overwhelmed and remain wholly inadequate.
3. the plans also refer to the impact on infrastructure, such as roads, drainage and sewage but, again, have no concrete proposals to deal with these issues. For example effectively covering the 2.51 hectare Burrows Nursery site will dramatically increase run off down Red Lane which, as you will be aware from work you had to carry out to alleviate flooding to my property, is already particularly vulnerable to this type of flooding. Additionally, as you will, also be aware from your own traffic statistics, Red Lane is already heavily trafficked (for what should be a rural lane) because of traffic heading for Warwick University and business park and suffers from a high accident rate for such a road. Development such as that proposed would require a complete rebuild and reconfiguration of Red Lane and very substantial related flood alleviation works but this does not seem to be addressed in the proposals.
4. the proposals do, quite correctly in my view, place a considerable value on landscape; unfortunately the proposed development would be on one of the highest points of Burton Green and, consistent with other comments in the overall proposals, this would have a very high landscape value which does not appear to have been factored into the decision to choose this particular site.
5. assuming that the development would be of typical modern build properties, they would be wholly out of character with the rest of the village and the development would be in danger of becoming a ghetto separate from the rest of the village. If there is to be development in Burton Green, which I am not opposed to as a matter of principle (subject to my other comments above), it should be small scale developments in a wide variety of locations in the village to enable new residents to integrate as quickly as possible into the existing community instead of looking at a single site to meet the requirements. This would have the added benefit that those sites currently discarded for access reasons, in particular, could again be suitable development sites.
6.the proposals do mention HS2 in passing but , assuming that this development goes ahead where it is currently planned, it will be very heavily affected during the construction phase and once complete; this alone would call into question, in my mind, its suitability for development.

You will, I am sure, gather from the foregoing that, while, as I say above, not opposed to development in Burton Green per se, the current proposal seems to me to be poorly thought through and wholly unsuitable