Draft Local Plan lists sites for 11,000 new homes for Stratford

ALTHOUGH many south Warwickshire residents may shiver at the thought of having thousands of extra new homes built right next to them over the next 25 years, the likelihood is that a significant number of the sites currently identified for development won’t make it into the final plan.

What is certain is that the Stratford district needs to provide enough land to enable the building of 27,000 new homes between 2027 and 2050. Under the South Warwickshire Local Plan, prepared jointly by Stratford and Warwick district councils, the Warwick district will need to build 27,000-plus.

The local plan is now open to consultation – until 7th March – for residents to offer the comments and insights on individual sites. And they’ll have to give solid reasons for objecting to a particular site. Just saying they don’t want a development won’t be enough. They’ll need to produce good environmental reasons for objecting – such as a site being at risk of flooding or other potential hazards to public health.

Apart from huge new settlements that are being proposed – such as 6,800 new homes on land stretching from Bearley across to Wilmcote and Pathlow – there are 24 “strategic grow locations” throughout both districts, 13 of them in the Stratford district.

According to the local plan, “a strategic growth location is a large site or an identified cluster of sites next to an existing settlement or employment location which, when grouped together, has the potential to deliver a strategic level of growth”.

Land currently identified for such potential development in the Stratford district includes the following: Gaydon and Lighthorne Heath (7,071 homes), north of Wellesbourne (9,221), south of Wellesbourne (2,479), west of Stratford (5,521), east of Stratford (5,469), Bidford (5,361), Alcester (3,163), north of Henley (2,499) and Hockley Heath (2,875).

However, the draft local plan makes it very clear that none of these figures are set in stone. The document states: “Due to the number of assumptions about each site, and the number of variables about housing demand and supply of housing over time (noting the plan period is to 2050), it is very difficult to put a figure on how many more potential strategic development areas are shown than will be required.”

The plan makes it clear that the proposals for new settlements may also soak up some of these figures, which means that some of these strategic sites may well be surplus to requirements.

In this context a leading councillor told the Herald this week that the land identified for new housing in the Stratford district over the next 25 years is three times more than required.

Cllr George Cowcher (Lib Dem, Wellesbourne South), deputy leader of Stratford District Council and its portfolio holder for planning and economic development, said: “If you take into account the strategic sites and the settlements we have three times as much as we need.”

And, crucially, he added: “Some of these options can only become credible if we can get the infrastructure – such as health and education provision and flood protection. You cannot develop these unless you have x, y and z in place.”

Cllr Cowcher said the some sites would be more likely candidates for development than others. But in any event it would be necessary to phase the development evenly through the whole period up to 2050 rather than having a glut of building at the beginning and then running out of land.

If that were to happen the Stratford district would find itself at the mercy of developers – as it had in the past – and local opinion would be overridden by the Planning Inspectorate or the government.

Council leader Cllr Susan Juned (Lib Dem, Alcester East), told the Herald: “Many of the sites won’t be in the local plan. The land put forward by landowners will not necessarily meet the criteria to be sustainable and possible. They will be sifted and rejected.”

Meanwhile, at 2pm on Saturday (8th February) residents of Wilmcote will meet at the village hall to discuss the implications of the new settlement proposed for Bearley, Wilmcote and Pathlow.

Residents of Bearley met recently and out of 160 present, 130 rejected the proposals. Three supported them – and they were believed to be local landowners.

At the Wilmcote meeting questions are expected to be asked about land ownership in the locality.