Testun llawn:
The plan for 100 to 150 new dwellings in the Kingswood settlement is disproprtionate and unjustifiable for 2 main reasons:
1. Kingswood has 842 residents and 381 dwellings. The relevant figures for the other 4 Primary Service Villages are Hampton Magna 1431 and 602, Bishops Tachbrook 1700 and 737, Radford Semele 1890 and 803, Cubbington 2183 and 980. It is unjustifiable therefore to expect all these settlements to take the same number of new dwellings. 150 new dwellings represents a 39% increase for Kingswood whilst for Hampton Magna it is 25% and Cubbington 15%. How is this justifiable?
In the Settlement Hierarchy Report Section 5.9, you state that the baseline growth rate target is 20% for Primary Service Villages and 15% for Secondary Villages. This would give Kingswood an allocation of 76, Hampton Magna 120, BT 147, RS 160 and Cubbington 196 - total 699 or an average of 140 each, but spread equitably.
Any case for faster growth than the 20% has to be based on superior services, and that is clearly not the case even from your scoring system, since Kingswood has the joint second lowest score of the Primary Service Villages. This brings me on to my second point:
2. Kingswood does not merit 53 points. The following scores are wrong:
- bus service - we do not have a daily bus service according to your website referenced - 2 points should therefore not be awarded.
- access to main town by public transport (bus) is so limited that 0 points should be given
- Post Office 3 marks - for sale and considered very likely to close. This should therefore not be counted.
- Village Shop is very small, has no scope for expansion and no car parking spaces at all. It is also not in "a cluster of shops and services". It should receive a maximum of 5 rather than 6 marks
- Place of Worship 3 marks - Lees Chapel is a specialist denomination rather than CoE. It is not a place which most Kingswood church-goers use. Should not be counted
- recreational open space 3 marks - every town and village will have footpaths and fields/parks to walk on so presumably every place in the world would score 3 points by this definition. Kingswood has no playing fields or sporting areas for young people.
- our primary school is contrained as indicated in an earlier report. It should therefore get 5 rather than 6 marks
Overall, these adjustments would lead to a drop from 53 marks to the low 40s. This in turn would make Kingswood a Secondary Service Village, and as mentioned above, that lowers the baseline target growth rate to 15%. In terms of new dwellings this reduces the target to 381 * 15% which equals 57 new dwellings. This would bring Kingswood into line with Cubbington.
Finally I have to object to the process by which early sites seem to have been identified. This involved no consultation or discussion with local residents. Some of the sites indicated have obvious problems with them, and others would be extremely damaging environmentally. The omission of other possible sites from investigation is also very surprising. I presume that all these questions will be answered when the next proposal emerges. Obviously 57 new houses would be a lot less challenging to site than 150!