Issue and Options 2023

Yes

The Stratford to Honeybourne railway line should be safeguarded, and indeed reopened - the council should lobby for a better government response to this project. However, projects to improve road congestion by widening roads or building new roads tend to lead to increases in traffic, vehicle miles driven, and car ownership, so that in the medium to long term similar levels of congestion end up being reestablished on a greater scale. There is a large academic literature on what is known as "induced road travel". Road-building is a mobility solution of the past, and the Council needs to lead on developing a more radical alternative to our existing transport system. See e.g.: https://www.cpre.org.uk/resources/the-impact-of-road-projects-in-england/ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-demand-an-evidence-review (This latter is a useful but deceptive review - it provides a good review of some of the literature, that shows induced traffic is a key issue on "highly congested" roads, but then argument concludes with a judgement that both acknowledges and dismisses the problem: "Induced demand is likely to be higher for capacity improvements in urban areas or on highly congested routes. There is little evidence that extreme levels of induced demand would therefore occur on the Strategic Road Network." But surely the main point of the national road-building strategy is to relieve or prevent high levels of congestion!)

selected

selected

selected

selected

selected

selected

selected

selected

Don't know

Yes

No answer given

It is said here to be "expected" that housebuilding will cater to the needs of residents (and thereby provide affordable housing, student accommodation and old people's accommodation, etc). On what is this expectation based? It is clear that there is a trade-off between house-building and environmental aims here. Stratford and Warwick Districts are said to require more housing than the national average. This is at least in part due to Birmingham and Coventry not being able to provide their full housing allocations. It would be helpful to provide more information as to why these two areas will not be able to do this. The sustainability evaluation makes clear that the 5th Spatial Growth Option should be rejected. The other spatial options may inform the final plan in their different ways. We lean to 2 as, although its advantages here seem small, we anticipate this might change given changes in national policy, e.g. if government gets round to providing for a big increase in public transport provision and subsidisation to make it affordable (or even free, as in some European cities). Have such potential radical changes been taken into account in the Sustainability Appraisal, and other evaluations? I.e. although at present there may not seem to be that much to choose between the different options, it may be that one is substantially more "net zero ready" than others, should national policy be improved. There is no consideration of the trade-off between creating new settlements and additional building on the outskirts of existing settlements, making this question hard to evaluate from a sustainability perspective. The appraisal says that Flood Zones 2 & 3 have "largely" been avoided. But have potential future flooding patterns been taken into account?

selected

selected

selected

selected

selected

selected

selected

selected

selected

selected