Artful Dodgers - how to bypass the local planning system.

No, this isn't about the Mem or Sainsburys. Strictly speaking, it's not even about Bristol, because the site is just 'over the border' in BaNES.

It's the three fields that lie between Stockwood and Whitchurch village. Normally used for grazing ponies, and criss-crossed by footpaths, the fields were bought a few years back by Robert Hitchins Ltd, a Cheltenham based developer specialising in commercial business parks.

Hitchins' ambitions for the three fields are a bit different, though. Up to 295 houses, pretty much filling up the remaining Green Belt open space between the two settlements. No shops, no schools, no health centre, no....... anything, really. Just an estate.

Twice they've put in planning applications to Bath and North East Somerset's development control committee. Twice, they've been unequivocally turned down, because their proposals break most of the rules in the planning book.

Now they're trying a new approach. They're appealing to the Planning Inspectorate against the most recent refusal, in the hope that Mr Pickles will override the considered views of local residents and councillors. But at the same time they're introducing a slightly scaled-down alternative version of the original proposal – with 200 houses instead of 295.

We have the opportunity to comment on this 'reduced' scheme – or at least, on the summary diagram that seems to provide the sole documentary foundation for it

But this version will skip the local scrutiny that was enough to see off the original plan. Instead, it will be for the government Planning Inspector to look at the evidence and make a recommendation to the boss – Eric Pickles, Localisation Hero.

Smart, eh?

The Planning Enquiry is expected next month. Deadline for comments is 15^th September.

[added 19th Sept]   The public inquiry is scheduled for 22nd October, 10am, at the Bath City F.C. ground, Twerton Park BA2 1DB

Green Belt wars: a developing front.

Around Long Ashton the developers, enthused by the prospect of the South Bristol Link Road, are lining up to challenge the green belt, and to make a quick fortune in the process.

Over on this side, around Stockwood and Whitchurch village, BaNES planners are also facing relentless bids to overturn the policies that protect the open space.

The attempt by developer Robert Hitchins to put close on 300 houses (and negligible supporting infrastructure) to fill the remaining gap between the two settlements has become a war of attrition. Twice the application has gone in; twice it's been refused, because it breaks all the agreed land-use planning priorities. On the first refusal, Hitchins started an appeal and then backed off. Now they're again going to Pickles and his inspectorate to complain that they've been badly treated.

You have to wonder what might have been said to make them think it's worth it.

Just across Stockwood Lane, you'd expect the neighbours at the rescue charity HorseWorld to value their green belt asset – that's why they're there. But for one reason or another (and the Bristolian offers his explanation here), they're having a hard time balancing the books .

Horseworld's Big Idea to secure its financial future is to scrap the existing Visitor Centre and the grazing around it, and put 120 houses there instead. This would, they hope, raise enough to build a bigger better Visitor Centre even further from the main transport links, to which lots of new people would drive ready to empty their purses and wallets in the cause of providing an income to keep the charity going forever.

I suspect that's not the most promising of business plans – but it is the foundation for the case for allowing 120 houses to be built on the present site, along with conversion of a number of listed buildings to residential use. That's why it's called an 'enabling' development. It's much like the way Sainsburys get permission for a new superstore, not on its own merits, but on the promise of a new football stadium. No-one, not even the applicants, pretends that this application has any merit per se – but the planning committee will be asked to judge it on the merits of the greater prize; more horses rescued = more jobs = economic growth. Except there won't be any more long term jobs.

Whilst Horseworld have been fairly upfront about their long term plan, they've been far less public about actually putting in the planning application, so few people outside HorseWorld's own email list are aware of it. The official closing date for comments is today Thursday, July 18^th.

The major issue is using green belt land to build a remote housing estate with no amenities other than a service road (that even the developers admit would double as a rat run for a rat run), plus a big car park and some industrial scale sheds where, previously, the rescued horses grazed.  Even so, a few more oddities about the application.....

• There's no attempt to mitigate the considerable carbon footprint of the new development. Not even the Horseworld's biggest product, manure, gets utilised to offset energy inputs. 
• The huge arena roof expanses remain pretty much untouched by solar panels. 
• The sole attempt to improve public transport access is to suggest that the 515 bus be diverted that way, away from many of us who benefit from it just now. 
• An existing bus service, the single trip 636 Tuesday and Friday route, is claimed by the 'professional' consultants to provide a daily service to Horseworld's nearest public road. 
• The same consultants use an 'apples and oranges' strategy, with different traffic measures to play down the increases in road traffic. 
• Every possible excuse is used to avoid 'green' construction standards. 
• Above all, the business plan seems to pluck future visitor figures out of thin air – and these are the figures that 'justify' the enabling development.

On balance, this is a shoddy, cheap, unsustainable and unjustified bid with high environmental costs, relying mostly on emotional blackmail that horses will suffer if the development is turned down.

We're not persuaded.

Border Wars

First, the progressive loss of chunks of the Green Belt in Ashton Vale, abandoned by the authorities who should be protecting it. Now the battle moves east, into BaNES territory between Stockwood and Whitchurch Village.

Here, developer Robert Hitchins has come back with an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate against BaNES' refusal to allow a housing development of close on 300 units across the green belt pastureland that separates the two communities on this south-eastern edge of Bristol. 

Big question now: is the new planning regime, with its much publicised presumption in favour of 'sustainable' development, strong enough to override the bid ?

It should be easy for the Inspector to say 'No', in spite of George Osborne's enthusiasm for removing anything that might get in the way of developers' ambitions.   The National Planning Policy that finally emerged from Whitehall last month does include (at p.19) continuing protection for Green Belt land like this. For that, we can thank intensive lobbying by a number of pressure groups in the run-up to publication.

What's more, in a widely reported interview on 'Today', Planning Minister Greg Clark assured listeners that

“The word sustainable is very important, what it means is there is a test of whether it is in the public interest to approve an application. If there are reasons, it destroys the environment, if it builds on greenbelt, if it builds outside a town centre when it's a commercial premises when you want to keep a town centre thriving, that would not be sustainable, it would not be in the public interest and thereforce it would not go ahead “

The site itself is a group of three fields, criss-crossed by four public footpaths*, mostly used for grazing ponies. It's an edge-of-town location, with the neighbouring built-up area almost entirely made up of houses, so this development would simply add to an 'urban monoculture' leaving others to provide essential infrastructure such as schools, transport, etc, which are already thin on the ground, while leaving the new residents to reach employment and entertainment at considerable distance from the new estate. Sustainable, eh?

The place to tell the Inspector what you think is:

http://www.pcs.planningportal.gov.uk/pcsportal/ViewCase.asp?caseid=2174286&coid=2108736 . Closing date is May 28.

*cue, a plug for the current local walks programme – especially the one on 30^th April that includes a traverse of these meadows!

379: Racing down to Radstock

I never quite understood why Radstock and Midsomer Norton are so badly connected by public transport to Bristol. Just one 'direct' (but in practice circuitous) bus route, taking well over an hour for the journey.

The good news is that the gap is about to be filled with the completion of Corridor 6 of the Greater Bristol Bus Network.

The 379 route, we're promised, will be an hourly service by way of the A37 through Pensford. It means, of course, that those of us living in Hengrove and Stockwood will be able to make the trip to Radstock (including its excellent Co-op, which – on our last visit, at least – was far better stocked that any of its CRS big brothers in the Bristol area) and without a change of buses, in around 45 minutes from Whitchurch village.

There's no evening service promised for the 379, though. According to the BaNES press release, if homegoing commuters miss the 5.35pm from Bristol, they're stuck with little choice but to head for Bath and try from there. I wonder if tickets will be valid on both routes.   That's the kind of detail that sometimes gets forgotten in the rush to present spanking new road layouts, buses, and shelters

The new service starts on April 2nd

(added 29/3/12)  New timetable is at http://www.travelinesw.com/swe/TTB/JP02__00003a54_TP.pdf

There'll be a knock-on effect on our own Bristol buses sharing the same route along the Wells Road. We should expect real-time information at (marginally) more comfortable stops, and a little bit more bus priority. Which can't be bad. I hope it doesn't get a 'Fishponds' reaction from the motorists.

And why is there still no sign of upgrading or re-equipping the miserable apology for a bus stop at Temple Meads?   Aah....  it must be  the imminent decision to turn Plot 6 into that city-wide transport interchange we've been promised.

The Land Grabbers are Coming.....

Last time I stood for election in Stockwood, I warned that 'they're moving the countryside further away'. Sure enough, it's all beginning to take shape now.

A new town in our own back yard.

While development plans for the Ashton Vale/ Barrow Gurney green belt have been hitting the headlines recently, we've not heard so much about the equally controversial bid for massive development along south-east edge of the city, bordering Stockwood and Whitchurch, and stretching to Keynsham and Hicks Gate.

That's about to change, as Bath & NE Somerset council consults on its 'Core Strategy' to guide future planning. It sees the development centred on Hicks Gate and on the fields around Whitchurch village.



In the next couple of weeks, they'll be holding two display and drop-in sessions to explain the options that are being considered in relation to a potential SE Bristol urban extension. Both take place at Whitchurch Community Centre (off Bristol Rd, about opposite Maggs Lane) between 3.30pm and 7.30pm. They're on Monday 2nd and Friday 6th November.

The BaNES website at www.bathnes.gov.uk/corestrategy shows the Core Strategy. It's called the 'final approval version' which doesn't give much confidence in their willingness to change anything now!. The details of the SE Bristol Urban Extension can be found in Chapter 5 - much more comprehensive than the map above.

Deadline for comments is December 11th.
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Meanwhile, the Friends of Stockwood Open Spaces somehow find themselves as one of the first ports of call for developers and planners in the area. Our (I confess an interest in this, as the secretary) 'to do' list now includes offering a local (pre-planning application) opinion of possible brownfield residential development immediately behind the Hollway Road shops. There's also an invitation from the City Council's 'Urban Extensions Project Manager' (honest!) to feed into a 'South Bristol Retail and Centres Study' commissioned from consultants GVA Grimley.

Arguably, Stockwood needs a separate and representative group of residents with an interest in local planning to take on these tasks.