An undeserved rescue for HorseWorld ?

It looks like HorseWorld's bodged up attempt to sell off its visitor centre site in Whitchurch for development may not be totally dead – in spite of being turned down by BaNES councillors last November.

HorseWorld's MD and the charity's trustees used the whole costly fiasco as an excuse to close the popular visitor centre in February. It now lies idle, the income it generated is lost, and the charity admits to being in all sorts of financial difficulty.

The perpetrators may yet be rescued from the hole they dug themselves into. On 10^th July BaNES will likely adopt a new 'Core Strategy' that takes the Visitor Centre land out of Green Belt and turns it into a development plot, providing up to 200 houses. See p.12 of this for a location map. The land was offered, under pressure to up the housebuilding land allocations, as a sacrifice to Mr Pickles, and has been gratefully accepted by his Inspector.

What next? It looks like going through.... so expect HorseWorld to make the most of the instant leap in land value by selling the land to one of the big developers. Perhaps to someone like Barratts, who are already turning the other side of the narrow rat-run Sleep Lane into an extension of clone village Britain

What HorseWorld would do with the windfall is anybody's guess. Would they revisit their expensively prepared scheme for a new Visitor Centre / Arena, with its dodgy business plan and its reliance on added road traffic? Would they give their MD a performance-linked pay rise? Would they go back to basics and do what the charity is supposed to do?

Only one thing's for sure. 200 new houses here will not provide affordable homes for those who really need them. 

Bid to develop Stockwood's Green Belt

Yes, they're back again. Developers Robert Hitchin have applied to build close on 300 houses in the three fields that still separate Whitchurch village and Stockwood.   Just the same houses as were refused by BaNES last year! Presumably they think the political climate's better now.

Deadline for comments is November 27. More on the Friends of Stockwood Open Spaces site

The Latest Land Grab

Developers are about to reveal plans for continuous housing across the fields that now separate Whitchurch village from Stockwood.

The area in question is 13 hectares of meadow, crossed by three footpaths and used at present for grazing horses. It's bounded by Staunton Lane to the south, Stockwood Lane to the east, Craydon Grove to the north, and the cycle path to the west. All of it's in BaNES, and if it goes ahead, the 340 homes will almost double the size of Whitchurch village to make a continuous built up area.

Footpath users will already have seen changes in the fields. A notice from Robert Hitchins Ltd (better known as developers of commercial and industrial estates) warns walkers to stay on the path - which has now been marked, uniquely in my experience, by posts every few yards with blue arrow footpath markers. It doesn't do much for that 'freedom of the countryside' feeling! There are signs, too, of exploratory boreholes.

Hitchins' agents Pegasus Planning, who take a great interest in the potential of greenfield, green belt countryside south of Bristol, are putting on an exhibition of their plans at Whitchurch Primary School (on the A37 Bristol Road) on Monday 4th and Thursday7th October, between 3.30pm and 8pm

That's a nice walk across the fields from Stockwood!

Added 1.10.10:
More detail on this Friends of Stockwood Open Spaces page

The Good and the Bad in the Counts Louse

Among all the usual knockabout namecalling and the routine failure to answer public questions intelligibly at this week's full council meeting, there were one or two items to raise the spirits.

One was the universal welcome given to the recommendations of the Sustainable Travel Select Committee, with its analysis of what's needed to turn Bristol's chronic transport problems around. More here.

There was the standing ovation that greeted a statement calling for Cllr Richard Eddy's resignation as Tory leader after his homophobic remarks in the Evening Post.

But counterbalancing those high spots was the party gamesmanship around a Tory motion about the Green Belt.

On the face of it, it was the kind of motion you couldn't really argue with, although you might wonder at the Tories wish to protect the regulatory protection of open spaces against the rapacious free market development set out in the government's Regional Spatial Strategy.

But there it was, calling for a legal challenge if the government sticks to its expansionist greenbelt-grabbing plans.

The LibDems seemed to lose sight of the detail, assuming that the Tories didn't want any building anywhere, and put in their own amendment. It concentrated on slagging off Tory shadow Minister Caroline Spellman's ill-advised letter about housing to Tory controlled councils. Didn't make much sense here in Bristol, where a Tory council seems rather less likely than a Green one - but the LibDems wanted to make their mark, so they used their majority to force the amendment through.

For some reason which remains a mystery to me, Bristol's politicians don't publish amendments in advance. This means that no-one has a chance to read them, evaluate them, research them, develop arguments for or against. No-one watching the webcast can make head or tail of what's happening. It's all reduced to a mere surprise tactic in the never-ending tribal warfare in the council chamber.

New Labour - in the shape of Mark Bradshaw - then introduced its own surprise amendment to the already-amended motion. This one concentrated on the need for affordable homes, and was strongly linked to encouraging the physical growth of the city - which, for Mark, is a prerequisite for funding infrastructure and for future prosperity.

By then, there was no time left to debate this weird article of the Labour economic faith. To tidy things up a quick vote was taken and lost, then the council nodded through what was left of this motion. (We were all nodding by that time). The whole debate had taken the full 45 minutes, but hadn't made any difference because they all voted on predetermined party lines.

No time remained for the three further motions, arguably of much greater importance, about four-yearly council elections, a climate change action programme, and the city bus services. They - and we - will have to wait.

Defending the Green Belt

They're lining up to develop Bristol's Green Belt. And plenty of groups and people in Bristol are lining up to prevent it.

One such initiative is a petition on the No. 10 web site, calling for the biggest threat (the draft Regional Spatial Strategy for the South West) to be withdrawn and to recommit to the protection of the green belt.

It's also worth a look at the 'Save Our Green Spaces' website which has plenty about the various campaigns - and at CPRE Avonside's map showing the extent of the threat around Bristol.

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.