Object

Representation ID: 7919

Received: 24/09/2021

Respondent: Ms Lorraine Jewell

I believe that the Issues and Options consultation was invalid. It represented growth in our parish as “urban growth” showing our whole parish as brown – urban land on brownfield or under utilised land. This is profoundly untrue. Our parish is entirely rural and classed as open countryside and is all utilised as high quality agricultural land (grade 2).

We would also call into question the effectiveness of the issues and options consultation as only 0.12% of the population responded.

A rail based growth strategy policy may be required if growth is to be located around rail.

At the same time the Council issued a 'call for sites' to update information received during 2014 and 2015 about land that owners wish to make available for development. Around 430 sites were submitted to the Council and similarly these have been available to view on the Council's web site since autumn 2020.

My home is in the very centre of the Dennybrook development site and in some of Taylor Wimpey documentation is even included as part of the development which is very misleading. I live in an isolated farmhouse surrounded by fields of wheat which could one day be housing…..how does that not change the character of the environment and a permanent change for future generations. The wildlife and flora of this area contains some protected species which there can be no mitigation measures which will achieve anything like appropriate protection of the rural character or natural gems which these fields and hedgerows promote.
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 we 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. We do not believe this is a fair consultation for them.

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