Object

Representation ID: 7833

Received: 03/09/2021

Respondent: Mr Mark Ibbett

I am very concerned that this call for sites initially showed Dennybrook (site 977) as a much smaller site beyond the boundaries of Honeydon. We were only informed in May 2021 (an astonishing 8 months after the call for sites closed) that the site boundary had expanded by approximately 25% to engulf the whole of the hamlet of Honeydon and Begwary. The new site showed many existing homes surrounded on all sides by housing estates. Therefore I believe that the call for sites was not conducted in an open and transparent manner. Residents only had one month to gather their thoughts about this enormous new development of up to 10,800 homes which engulfed their properties before the draft consultation opened. I do not believe this has a fair consultation for us.

Duloe Field (3420) was also added late. I do not believe sites submitted after the deadline should be considered.

I believe the consultation has been flawed at every stage:
• The leaflets went out after the start of the consultation, giving less notice to respond
• The leaflets were not clear that there were other options other that the 4 highlighted. This was very misleading.
• The consultation has taken place over the summer period, where many people are away, looking after family in the school summer holidays and for many in our Parish, they are harvesting on the very land you would like to build on. This summer has been particularly difficult for this type of consultation activity as following the pandemic, more people are trying to take holidays. All of this has contributed to making this consultation very difficult to make it meaningful.
• There are mixed messages about when the last parcel of land for Dennybrook was submitted. Beds Borough say recently and they applied it to the call for sites chart when they received it. Taylor Whimpey say that it was a long time prior to that. Someone is incorrect and it is leading to mistrust and again impacts the meaningfulness of the consultation because people don’t trust those running the consultation process. This again discourages responses, making this an unmeaningful consultation.
• The response mechanism is very lengthy and time consuming and difficult to understand or to make it work online. This again discourages responses, making this an unmeaningful consultation.
• Only 4 options is misleading and even our MP stated that this was misleading.
• It is also misleading that it only talks of Dennybrook being 2500 homes, when it could reach 10,800 in reality. It is disappointing that this measure has been taken to make sure that people cannot respond to something so important or have full visibility of it.