Issue and Options 2023

Nothing chosen

“Burton Green Parish Council (BGPC) has serious doubts about the veracity of the SWLP process, especially as the new plan will endeavour to make determinations for the period up to 33 years from the starting point of the present 2017 WDC Local Plan — which was prepared on the basis of (excessively) over-optimistic population and household growth projections. These have potentially resulted, or are currently resulting, in an over-provision of new homes which are most likely excessive to, or are at least unsuitable, to meet the requirements of local needs, such as affordable housing for young people, and are instead likely meeting the needs of inward migrants, including substantial numbers (perhaps as many as 30% in Warwick District) of second home owners. Ease of travel via the M40 and/or Chiltern Railway corridor, and lower house prices than in, say, Buckinghamshire or Oxfordshire, may well have encouraged/are now enabling people to buy new homes below the sale value of their homes further south, enabling them to move with a substantial profit — a trend likely to have been enhanced during the Covid-19 lockdowns which led to a desire by many to move out of larger towns or cities into more ‘countrified’ areas.. BGPC has strong views on this matter — and no desire for the situation to be perpetuated by the new SWLP — as the parish is faced with 425 additional homes being already imposed on the village (south of Westwood Heath Road), doubling the size of Burton Green in terms of both dwellings and population compared with just six years ago. This development, unnecessary then and now in the view of BGPC, is taking place under the terms of the 2017 Warwick Local Plan which was amended from its original draft form in order to meet alleged housing needs of Coventry city. Moreover, an adjacent site south of Westwood Heath Road was also removed from the green belt and classified as ‘safeguarded’ for future development of perhaps 700-900 homes which, if perpetuated in the new SWLP, would quadruple the size of Burton Green since 2017. BGPC objected to the addition of both sites south of Westwood Heath Road when the original WDC Plan was revised at the requirement of the Inspector conducting the Local Examination in order to meet needs that were then claimed could not be accommodated within Coventry. This occurred despite emerging evidence — even then — that the population projections for Coventry were seriously overstated, a view also held by CPRE-Warwickshire and the then-newly-formed Coventry & Warwickshire Keep Our Greenbelt Green (KOGG) campaign [of which BGPC was a founding member] but our complaints and concerns were not accepted by either of the planning authorities or by the inspectors who conducted the public examinations of both Warwick’s and Coventry’s Local Plan proposals. However, the 2021 Census results have confirmed the rightness of our objections to the additional sites being added into the 2017 Warwick Local Plan. The likely consequence now is that there is an over-provision, either actual or emerging, of new housing to meet local needs but which is being/will be absorbed by inward migration and/or second home purchases due to either the attraction of prices or the desire of developers to fulfil sales targets for homes they have committed to build. This is not true growth but merely transfers of economic activity from other areas to South Warwickshire, and not necessarily to the benefit of local residents. In the view of BGPC, a full and proper understanding of recent and current circumstances, and these trends and their consequences, is now essential before seeking to set about finalising any new Local Plan for all of South Warwickshire for the next 27 years.”