Object

Representation ID: 10132

Received: 29/07/2022

Respondent: Roebuck Land and Planning

Legally compliant? No

Sound? No

Duty to co-operate? Not specified

Stepped Delivery Topic Paper
The delivery of the EWR scheme to justify rail-based growth at Little Barford is so fundamental to the Plan that it has become the main justification for the stepped trajectory. Once again, we would argue that this is based on incorrect assumptions and a reassessment is necessary to ensure that this is sound.
Leaving aside the issue of the increase in annual housing requirement as arguably this should be addressed through the allocation of sites through the Local Plan, the main reason for the stepped trajectory is the delivery of the EWR and the A421 relief road. As such it is suggested that once the relief road is in place and the Local Plan has been adopted, there is no reason to delay the delivery of much needed housing towards the back end of the plan period. We therefore suggest that from 2025/2026 the plan should seek to deliver the full housing requirement and that the stepped trajectory is no longer relevant at that time.
This would therefore mean that Policy DS3(S) ‘Amount and timing of housing growth’ would need to be amended to reflect a revised trajectory. It is proposed that for the first six years of the plan, (which relates to the delivery of the A421 relief road) a lower delivery rate to 970 dwellings per annum is applied, however once the A421 improvements are in place, the delivery rate should be evenly distributed over the remaining years of the Local Plan (i.e. 21,280 dwellings should be delivered in the remaining 14 years) this would equate to 1,520 dwellings per annum for years 2025/26 – 2039/40.
For reasons set out in our representations to the plan, it is not possible to rely upon EWR infrastructure to justify an increase in the delivery rates from 2030 onwards for Little Barford. There is no justification for the high delivery assumptions thereafter which culminate in reliance upon 600 homes per annum during the last 3 years of the plan period. There has been no assessment of market absorption in this specific location, having regard to the overlap with the Housing Market Area of St Neots within which it will sit and rely upon for wider services during its construction and post completion. St Neots is a key focus for growth within Huntingdonshire’s current local plan strategy to 2036 and the impact of delivery rates needs to be tested within this wider Housing Market Area context.