BABTAG News
It has been a relatively quiet time for the last few months on the housing development front but the pace is now picking up. There is now a planning consultation application from Taylor Wimpey for the 960 houses HA1 Land South East of Syston complete with Masterplan for the development. (planning application P/24/0975/2 )
We’ve also had the details of the Charnwood 5 year housing supply which manages to reach its target without including any houses from the probable sites close to Barkby identified for development in the “emerging” Charnwood Local Plan.
There has been an offer to meet the parish council by Jelsons concerning the HA8 former Woodgate Nurseries site, and a mystery planning application regarding land west of Hilltop Road on what must be the site of the proposed southern link road from the Leicester ring road into Thorpebury. This is so bound in confidentiality that rumours will soon start circulating.
However not everything is moving. Despite everything being agreed between the authorities and the builders, there is still no date for the road closure on Hamilton Lane to allow the two new access roads into Thorpebury to be built and no safety improvements on Barkby thorpe Road between Barkby Thorpe and the southern single lane working chicane. Fencing and an improved access close to the northern chicane to the new dog-walking field appear to have been completed and an advertising sign for “Barkby Meadows” suggests an opening fairly soon.
HA1 Land SE of Syston
In their planning application, Taylor-Wimpey has included a glossy Masterplan for the south of Syston HA1. (See map below) It purports to have paid attention to the concerns and objectives of local people who attended consultation workshops in October 2022. This has resulted in the concentration of much of the new housing on the Syston fringe and the creation of a wooded buffer on the north side of Barkby Lane and of a sizeable green park alongside the Barkby brook.
However many questions still demand answers not least because many local people in the consultation made it abundantly clear that they did not want the development in any form believing that the 4500 house of Thorpebury were more than enough for the area.
Negative impacts of the scheme.
1. Rural to Suburbia. No wide wooded buffer is declared alongside the proposed housing on the west side of the Queniborough Road but a narrow strip of allotments over which the houses will be highly visible thus suburbanisng what is currently a rural road into into Barkby. Also, inevitably the area of separation/green wedge is substantially reduced by the housing estates which the developers claim could accommodate even more than the 960 houses of the Charnwood Local Plan.
2. Traffic. The plan underplays the proximity of the Thorpebury development on the south side of Barkby Lane and does not really address the huge burden of traffic these two major developments will impose on Barkby Lane and Queniborough Road which will each have accesses onto the south-east of Syston estates.
3. Flooding risk. The plan estimates that only 27 hectares out of 64 are at risk of flooding and appears to underestimate the risk of climate change by building on the flood plain.
4. Loss of prime agricultural land. The plan casually accepts it will be building on valuable grade 2 agricultural land when such rich land is vital for food security.
- Pressure on local services. The plan does not fully address the pressure on local services providing only for a single shop and a single school on site.
6 Need for the houses? Whilst the HA1 site features in the ‘emerging’ Charnwood Local Plan it does not appear in the sites contributing to the current 5 year housing supply. There is surely then time to assess whether a development of this scale is needed in the 2030s and 40s?
Want to read the application and comment? Visit the following website by putting the link below into a new tab not a search engine:
https://pap.charnwood.gov.uk/PublicAccess_LIVE/SearchResult/RunThirdPartySearch?FileSystemId=DM&FOLDER1_REF=PLN655515
Owen Bentley, Chairman BABTAG
