Bloor Homes - Sandleford Park East Update
On Thursday, as Clerk, I attended the Stakeholder Liaison Group meeting at Bloor Homes for an update on Sandleford Park East development.
What a great opportunity for Bloor Homes to create a 5 star development in a countryside setting. These developments are many years in the making and require the local councils to ensure they have their key resident wishes listed at the start, or they will never be part of the finished development.
A developer's job is to build as many houses as possible, maximising profits for their shareholders within their own policies. Rebecca Fenn-Tripp, Planning Director for Bloor Homes, stated they were a 5 star developer, implying they want to create the best homes they can. So fair to assume they are happy to accept reduced profits to ensure that policy is met.
Planning law, the National Planning Policy Framework, dictates the rules around planning and mentions allotments at least twice:
8. Promoting healthy and safe communities
96. Planning policies and decisions should aim to achieve healthy, inclusive and safe places which:
(c) enable and support healthy lives, through both promoting good health and preventing ill-health, especially where this would address identified local health and well-being needs and reduce health inequalities between the most and least deprived communities – for example through the provision of safe and accessible green infrastructure, sports facilities, local shops, access to healthier food, allotments and layouts that encourage walking and cycling.
13. Protecting Green Belt land
154. Development in the Green Belt is inappropriate unless one of the following exceptions applies:
b) the provision of appropriate facilities (in connection with the existing use of land or a change of use), including buildings, for outdoor sport, outdoor recreation, cemeteries and burial grounds and allotments; as long as the facilities preserve the openness of the Green Belt and do not conflict with the purposes of including land within it;
I asked Rebecca about allotments and she replied they were not asked by West Berkshire planning officers to provide them.
Planning officers at the council have to literally “weigh things up” with each proposal carrying more weight than another. The Local Plan is a very complicated document that takes a number of years to produce and is used as the legal vehicle to determine if land can be removed from the Green Belt and used for development.
If we had a Neighbourhood Plan in place, the planning officers would have to refer to it and it would carry the same weight as the Local Plan.
So, if Greenham Parish residents had decided to add to their Neighbourhood Plan that any development of flats required both amenity space and also 1 allotment for every 10 flats, then developers would have to provide allotments.
Currently we have an outdated Parish Plan which does not carry any weight in the planning department, we would need a Neighbourhood Plan for that.
The Crucial Difference: Legal Clout vs. A Wishlist
Unlike our existing Parish Plan, an adopted Neighbourhood Plan carries statutory weight. It becomes a legal component of the local development framework. Planning inspectors and the local planning authority must legally align their decisions with our specific policies on housing mix, design standards, and protected green spaces.
For us to create a Neighbourhood Plan we need at least 20 residents to form the Steering Group. Since we published the post below, 1 resident has stepped forward…
https://greenham.gov.uk/news/help-us-create-a-neighbourhood-plan-for-greenham-parish-council
Would you be interested in joining the Steering Group? Contact me clerk@greenham.gov.uk
Thank you.
Jon Davey, Clerk, Greenham Parish Council
