1500 more houses threatened under the Charnwood Local Plan
see map above
As if the 4500 houses of Thorpebury were not more than enough for our area the borough council has now designated sites close to Barkby for over 1500 additional houses. These are HA1 960 (747) houses south of Syston, HA2 270 (208) houses off the Queniborough Road, HA3 195 (157) houses off Barkby Road, HA7 105 (70) houses off Barkbythorpe Lane west of the Railway and HA8 39 (0) houses on Barkby Lane. Some of these houses are on sites where planning applications have recently been rejected by the borough’s Plans Committee. Moreover the house numbers are bigger than in the draft Local Plan that BABTAG commented on in 2019. (The 2019 figures are in red brackets after the current ones). BABTAG acknowledges that there is an urgent need for more houses to be built for the people of Leicestershire and Leicester but will question why so many should be planned so close to Barkby and Barkby Thorpe given that we have already had to accept the 4500 of Thorpebury.
A six week public consultation on the Local Plan will begin on 12th July and BABTAG urges local residents to read the Plan’s housing proposals and to voice their own concerns to Charnwood Council. It is worth noting that the council’s target of building 1111 houses each year till 2037 across the borough does not take into account the City of Leicester’s unmet need nor the government’s proposed shake-up up of planning law which might well increase the numbers. How to comment will appear shortly on the council’s website and the plan can be accessed by googling “Charnwood Local Plan”.
BABTAG’s own grounds for objection will include the inevitable increase in traffic on already over-crowded local roads, loss of Green Wedge and designated areas of separation between Barkby, Syston, and Queniborough and the threat to the rural setting of Barkby.