Testun llawn:
The Preferred Options document appears to take no account of local needs, as expressed by surveys already carried out by parish councils. In the case of Hampton Magna, a recent survey by Budbrooke Parish Council identified a need for no more more than a handful of new homes, rather then the 100 being proposed here. There is very little scope for increasing employment opportunities within Hampton Magna itself, so that the vast majority of new residents would need to travel to Warwick or Leamington or beyond to find work, thus increasing the current peak time traffic congestion still further.
Hampton Magna is surrounded by Green Belt land, and any further development would inevitably encroach on the Green Belt, and have a significant impact on areas of great landscape value. It must be remembered that, when Hampton Magna was built in the 1960's and early 1970's, it was built entirely within the boundaries of the derelict Budbrooke Barracks site rather than on agricultural land, and almost certainly would not otherwise have been permitted by the Planners of that period. People living on the edge of the current development have had a reasonable expectation for the past 30+ years that they would not be surrounded by new housing. The proposals in the Preferred Options document shatter any such illusions, and will result in "planning blight" until resolved, making houses difficult to sell. I believe that the current boundaries should be maintained, with any development being restricted to infill and windfall sites.
It is by no means clear just where, in the vicinity of Hampton Magna, 100 new houses could be built. The only possible site identified in the 2012 SHLAA document is Site R74 (6.45 Hectares) to the south of Arras Boulevard. The text says that Overall Suitability is "in small part only" and that Achievability is "subject to evidence of local housing need and sensitive design to mitigate impact on the landscape". As stated above,there is very little evidence of local housing need. If this site were to be developed, there is no way in which a significant impact on the landscape could be avoided since the "site is relatively prominent in the landscape with intervisibility with historic core of Warwick".[Your words, not mine!]
If the size of Hampton Magna is to be expanded by anything approaching 100 houses, the following infrastructure improvements will be required:
* A new sewer will need to be built, or the capacity of the existing one will need to be increased significantly
* A new connection will be required to the A46 in order to carry the additional traffic and relieve the current conjestion - requiring a new junction in the vicinity of the service area
* New school(s) will be needed in Hatton Park and/or Chase Meadow in order to free up space in Hampton Magna School for children from the new development
As previously stated, is is inconceiveable that all of this could be adequately funded from levies on 100 new houses.
On a more general note, there now seems to be a presumption that if a Green Belt designation inconveniently gets in the way of development, all that is needed is to move the boundary so as to re-designate a parcel of land for development. This flies in the face of the Green Belt concept, and must be vigorously resisted.