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.

What the Government giveth.......

We're lucky enough in Stockwood to border a big chunk of Bristol's 'Green Belt'. It's one of the things that encouraged us to move here.

Some of it, as the map shows, is within the city boundary, including the golf course, the Open Space, and even the sports ground beside Sturminster Road. But most is in neighbouring BaNES, giving us that pleasant rural edge.

For now.

Three or four years ago, the Regional Assembly - which yesterday ceased to be - together with its partners in GOSW drafted a regional plan - the Regional Spatial Strategy - saying that the Bristol region needed many thousands more houses to accommodate its growth in importance, turnover, and population. Most would be in 'urban extensions'. 6,000 of them should be on our south-east corner. It would mean significant loss of Green Belt land, but not to worry, they'd designate some more. Somewhere near Radstock Norton.

Then it all got into a long-winded planning process, in which Bristol Greens and various other lobby groups argued against this unsustainable expansion - while property developers argued enthusiastically for it. Last year saw many of us repeating the arguments in front of an 'Examination in Public' at Exeter. We finished up evens in this corner of Bristol, still with land to find for 6,000 homes, and a big gash in the Green Belt. The report went off to the government.

Next, the government put its own stamp on it - and upped the figures further(no-one quite knows why, and they haven't told us). Once again, lots of us challenged the numbers, which seem far higher than is needed.

But unless the Government has a change of heart (or a change of the growth agenda), the local councils are stuck with aligning the local plans - the BDF, or Bristol Development Framework - to the government's numbers, by allocating land for the housing they say is necessary. For the SE Bristol extension (Keynsham to Whitchurch), that's 10,500, including 1,500 within the Bristol boundary.

I've been to two meetings about this this week. At the first, in Long Ashton, many residents were (rightly) hopping mad at the prospect of their green valley being filled with housing, especially as there's no real case been made for it.

At the second, BCC planners were inviting reps of various 'stakeholder' groups to consider how the city could squeeze in all the extra homes demanded by the government. Most people felt that more intensive development would be much better than making new land grabs - but it would be hard to manage. No use building homes if they turn into social deserts. The 'buy-to-let' market has a lot to answer for.

But it looks like we can say goodbye to 'rural' Stockwood.