Object

Representation ID: 7476

Received: 21/09/2021

Respondent: Ms Frances Maynard

Wilstead is a village of just over 1,000 houses and any further substantial development will completely alter the character of the village. We have recently completed a Neighbourhood Plan where villagers were consulted and the overwhelming response to further development was that it was not appropriate for Wilstead (especially as we have the Wixams development less than a mile away). There needs to be a distinct gap between the village and Wixams to prevent the two communities becoming merged; this is also necessary to preserve the two separate identities. Wilstead’s development in the past has been of a stretched ‘ribbon development’ form and traffic is an ongoing problem. Much further development would increase these traffic problems with both Cotton End road and Bedford road already experiencing speeding and congestion at busy times, such as the school closing time.

The facilities in the village are not suited to much further expansion, for example the primary school is oversubscribed, and the bus service only covers part of the village. The village has already agreed to accept development of 105 houses as its contribution to the current local plan; this is an increase of over 10% and this will already threaten or overwhelm local facilities such as village primary school and the secondary school at Wixams, both of which are already oversubscribed. Also, there is only one small shop and a pharmacy that is not open all the time, with no easy public transport to access GP or medical facilities. All of these reasons mean the village is not appropriate for more large scale ‘estate style’ developments that do not bring any benefit to the community (as they predominantly house commuters who do not have the time to engage with village activities.

A key question to be asked of the Borough’s Local Plan is why is there not more sharing of the development in both north and south Bedfordshire? Wilstead appears to be chosen because of its proximity to an existing large-scale development in the form of Wixams. Further large scale development would put too much pressure on a village that already requires considerable volunteer effort to transport villagers to and from hospitals and GPs (the Wilstead Good Neighbours Scheme)!