Bedford Borough Local Plan 2040 Plan for Submission

Support

Representation ID: 10015

Received: 27/07/2022

Respondent: Shortstown Parish Council

Shortstown Parish Council has reviewed your draft local plan 2040 and after careful con-
sideration have the following comments. In the proposed 2040 Local Plan there are several
options proposing further development within Shortstown parish but due to the high levels
of development that Shortstown has already seen further housing beyond what has already
been built would risk Shortstowns rural character, further diffuse its small and fragile
centre, and risk the future of the historic airship sheds and Cardington airfield.
We support the following policies found within it.
Policy HOU18 development of the former DVSA site. This policy would makes
good use of a brownfield site currently surrounded by houses and we would welcome the
developer to open consultation with us at the earliest opportunity. The site is of limited
size and so while it would create additional traffic load compared to some other proposed
sites it would be of a more limited and manageable amount.

Support

Representation ID: 10017

Received: 27/07/2022

Respondent: Shortstown Parish Council

Shortstown Parish Council has reviewed your draft local plan 2040 and after careful consideration have the following comments. In the proposed 2040 Local Plan there are several options proposing further development within Shortstown parish but due to the high levels
of development that Shortstown has already seen further housing beyond what has already been built would risk Shortstowns rural character, further diffuse its small and fragile centre, and risk the future of the historic airship sheds and Cardington airfield.
Policy HOU16 development on land east of Wixams
This proposes a cycle link to Shortstown/Cotton End that would be close to the North end of Shocott spring and would be an ideal cycle route to Wixams station(when and if that happens). Ideally it would connect to the existing right of way between Sefton Fields and
Shocot Spring and/or with the cyclepath on the A600. Shortstown greatly needs rights of way for walking and cycling to the east towards Elstow and Wixams. Ideally to connect to the Bunyan trail and enable greater opportunity for travel on bicycle of by foot for residents of the borough.

Object

Representation ID: 10020

Received: 27/07/2022

Respondent: Shortstown Parish Council

Legally compliant? Not specified

Sound? No

Duty to co-operate? No

We oppose the following policies.
Policy HOU17 Development at College Farm. Over the few years Shortstown has
been targeted for massive development. Between 2014 and March 2021 901 houses have
been built in the parish. When the Cardington Airfield development to the North of
the sheds has been completed another 592 houses will have been added. Once that is
complete that will be 1493 houses added to the parish since 2014. While the development of RAF Cardington did include a notional village centre this has been slow to develop
and Shortstown is still severely deficient in key services for the level of households now
within the parish. The Transport Model discussed in supporting documents shows the
A600/A421 junction is already forecast to be saturated and additional housing would only
make things worse. For this reason we would also object to large development within
the parish of Cotton End as that would also massively increase the strain on our limited
transport infrastructure.
The only data we could find via the DfT for traffic on the A600 is available at the following
URLs
Count point 77216 https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/manualcountpoints/77216
Count point 81517 https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/manualcountpoints/81517
Both of these points are on Tinkers hill on and the reason for changing ID is not known but they are both in approximately the same location. Discarding the estimated traffic numbers and plotting only those that were manually counted we can see that there has been
significant traffic growth on the A600. This is shown in the first figure. It is a reasonable conclusion that this significant increase in traffic coincides with and is caused by the recent housing increases in Shortstown. Given the very large site in Shortstown to the North East
of the two historic airship sheds which is at an early phase of construction additional large traffic growth is only to be expected.
(graph included in original submission)
As can be seen in the second included figure Shortstown has seen recent rapid change over
recent years and when the additional development to the North of the historic sheds is
included this pushes the developed area within the parish to roughly 25% of the parish.
This land use estimate was calculated using GIS software and creating polygons around
each development one at a time to allow both the area of each development to be calculated
and also to understand the cumulate area used for housing and its growth over time. The
data is available on request. The proposed College Farm and Shorts Park developments would completely change the character of the parish and ruin the future of the sheds and aireld for movie and airship use.
(graph Shortstown parish land use for Housing included in original submission)
Beyond that it is a reasonable conclusion from the existing growth in traffic and services demand we have seen College Farm would increase these problems still further and we have not yet even seen the full impact of developments that have already been approved.

Object

Representation ID: 10022

Received: 27/07/2022

Respondent: Shortstown Parish Council

Legally compliant? Not specified

Sound? No

Duty to co-operate? No

Policy DS2(S) ix. Expansion of Shortstown to the west. In keeping with our
objection to Policy HOU17 we object to expansion of Shortstown to the west. Shortstown
has seen substantial additional housing but no improvement of transport links and the
impact of large sites currently in build has not been reviewed. A pause is required in order for traffic, services, and related items to be stabilised and the as yet unknown new higher level. We can always proceed with additional developments later but once approved they cannot easily be cancelled after the damage they cause has been revealed.

Object

Representation ID: 10023

Received: 27/07/2022

Respondent: Shortstown Parish Council

Legally compliant? Not specified

Sound? No

Duty to co-operate? No

Policy TC1(S) We oppose the characterization on page 53 of our connection to Bedford as good. With the exception of portions of the industrial area within the parish north of the A421 we are connected to Bedford via a single road and while it is designated as an A
road it does not represent a good connection. We also have one bridleway under the A421 but this can only be reached by walking along roads without pavement through Harrowden.
Shortstown is dependent on the A600 for professionals to commute to work either North towards the A421 and Bedford or to the South. However this single link has proven to be vulnerable to disruption going as it does through an accident blackspot at the junction with
Harrowden Lane. Public transport is currently insufficient except for accessing Bedford for occasional shopping. This creates a tension between the notional Borough policy to reduce car use with transport infrastructure that discourages public transport use for commuters.
We oppose our designation in Policy TC1(S) on page 86 as a Key Service Centre. As previously discussed given our resources and services we are more of a neighbourhood centre.