The Bedford River Valley Park (BRVP) Landowners comprised of, Bedford Borough Council Estates, Connolly Foundation, Forest of Marston Vale, Peter Bennie Ltd, Southill Estate and Tarmac Trading Ltd (“The BRVP Landowners”) support the principle of identifying growth at strategic locations adjacent to the urban area, and particularly at the BRVP. They consider, however, that for effectiveness, legibility and in order to be considered positively prepared, Policy DS5(S) should be amended so that it identifies a specific housing target for the BRVP Enabling Development and also for any other strategic locations adjacent to the urban area.

The current approach of setting an overall target of 1,500 dwellings across the strategic locations adjacent to the urban area is considered too high level and lacks clarity on what is anticipated from each site. For the BRVP Enabling Development the target should be approximately 1,000 dwellings to reflect the work undertaken by the BRVP Landowners on site capacity, having regard to constraints and appropriate densities across the allocation area, this includes the land use budget and density plans submitted in support. That indicative figure is also included in Table 9 of the Development Strategy Topic Paper (May 2022) and should be included in the Policy. The use of an indicative or approximate figure allows sufficient flexibility for the final quantum of housing to be determined by the detailed master planning and the application stage.

The BRVP Landowners have also made submissions separately on Policy DS2(S) suggesting that it would assist the legibility of the Plan if that Policy were to include the dwelling numbers and area of employment land envisaged to be delivered from the different aspects of the spatial strategy. This may be best achieved by amalgamating it with Policy DS5S.