BASE HEADER

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ID sylw: 106790

Derbyniwyd: 05/03/2025

Ymatebydd: Alison Conway

1. Housing Need
South Warwickshire's housing need can be met without building on green belt land. The Local Plan's own Sustainability Appraisal shows that:
• Strategic Growth Locations that are not in the green belt have capacity for 48,500 dwellings.
• New Settlements that are not in the green belt have capacity for a further 6,000 dwellings.
This means that it is possible to meet housing need without building on green belt land and therefore, exceptional circumstances cannot be met to release green belt sites to meet the housing requirements.

2. Sustainable Locations
The Local Plan purports to put sustainability at its heart and wants new developments to be "20-minute neighbourhoods", where local services, including train stations and bus routes, are within a 10 minute walk. Site SG06 does not comply with this; it is a minimum 30 minutes’ walk to Leamington train station.

3. Green Belt
The green belt around North Leamington continues to fulfil the current stated purposes of green belt land, to:
• check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas
• prevent neighbouring towns merging into one another
• assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment
• preserve the setting and special character of historic towns
• assist in urban regeneration, by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land.
SG06 clearly meets all five of the above criteria.
In addition to SG06, numerous other sites along the A452 were put forward in the Call for Sites. Once land is removed from the Green Belt for development this cannot be undone and a precedent is set which makes it easier for adjoining swathes of land to be built on. Therefore, were development to go ahead, the amount of green belt land ultimately lost could be far greater than just the 360 acres of SG06.

4. Flaws in the Green Belt Review
There are fundamental flaws in the Green Belt Review carried out by Arup in 2024.
The main flaw is the rationale for excluding Leamington Spa, Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon from the definition of 'large built-up area' on the basis that they sit on the edge of the Green Belt, rather than within it.
The assessments of SG06 is also unsound. Of the four parcels of land at SG06, three are assessed as making 'a moderate contribution' to the purposes of the green belt, and one 'a weak contribution? The assessment was primarily desk-based, with just a single visit to a viewing point at each site.

5. SG06 is high quality agricultural land and makes an important contribution to sustainability and security of food supply.

6. The same proposals were rejected by the Planning Inspector in 2017.
The Planning Inspector's 2017 response to the existing Local Plan for Warwick District states that there is a need "to maintain the separate identity of surrounding villages such as Leek Wootton and Cubbington and avoid significant reductions in the gap to Kenilworth".
This area has already suffered significant damage to openness and character with the construction of the HS2 railway line causing interruption of farmland and wildlife habitat.

7. Contribution to 'overarching principles' of the Local Plan.
SG06 contributes to two of the five 'overarching principles' of the Local Plan: 'healthy, safe and inclusive' and 'biodiverse and environmentally resilient' as follows:
i. A healthy, safe and inclusive South Warwickshire: In surveys residents say that the open Green Belt location is the thing they value most about living in this area, with benefits for both physical and mental health. Use of the public footpaths increased markedly during the Covid 19 pandemic lockdown and has continued since.
Area SG06 is distinctive green belt land because it is traversed by 3.2km of rural footpaths. Calculating this in terms of metres of footpath per hectare, shows that SG06 has a higher proportion of footpaths than the West Midlands Green Belt as a whole, which in turn is far higher than the national average.
Thus SG06 makes a direct contribution to the health and wellbeing of the thousands of people who use the area each year.
ii. A biodiverse and environmentally resilient South Warwickshire: A local study, carried out over the course of 2023-2024 has observed a diverse range of plant and wildlife in SG06. The hedgerows, field margins and managed meadows provide habitats for:
◦ roe deer, Reeves muntjac deer, badgers, rural foxes and otters
◦ birds on the RSPB 'red list' including skylarks, swifts, fieldfares, house sparrows and starlings
◦ birds of prey such as sparrowhawks, peregrine falcons, kestrels, buzzards and red kites
◦ butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies
◦ plants which are vital for conserving the wildlife chain, for example musk mallow, bush vetch and yellow archangel.
The high quality agricultural land continues to provide rural employment and undergo diversification of farming techniques. Its use for modern arable, grazing and wildlife refuge benefits the environment as well as helping to preserve the characteristics of a rural Victorian village in Old Milverton.