Testun llawn:
I am responding to the above consultation by email as, despite the consultation period being extended to Friday 24 January, the website consultation process was shut down on 20 January and I am not, therefore able to use that mechanism which would have been my preferred mechanism. Also as a result I have no information on the questions that the council are seeking consultation on and I have therefore responded in a free form fashion.
1. the plans seem to place great emphasis on the fact that the demographics of the rural community are both different from the urban community and have changed over the period 2001-2011. I do not disagree with this but I note that this has been the case since the mid 18th century in England and can not, therefore, be a logical and rationale basis for basing housing proposals on.
2. the plans refer to concerns about the impact of developments on local infrastructure but, certainly for Burton Green, contain no practical proposals to resolve these issues; this increases the likeyhood of development such as that in Balsall Common a few years ago where local medical and dental facilities were overwhelmed and remain wholly inadequate.
3. the plans also refer to the impact on infrastructure, such as roads, drainage and sewage but, again, have no concrete proposals to deal with these issues. For example effectively covering the 2.51 hectare Burrows Nursery site will dramatically increase run off down Red Lane which, as you will be aware from work you had to carry out to alleviate flooding to my property, is already particularly vulnerable to this type of flooding. Additionally, as you will, also be aware from your own traffic statistics, Red Lane is already heavily trafficked (for what should be a rural lane) because of traffic heading for Warwick University and business park and suffers from a high accident rate for such a road. Development such as that proposed would require a complete rebuild and reconfiguration of Red Lane and very substantial related flood alleviation works but this does not seem to be addressed in the proposals.
4. the proposals do, quite correctly in my view, place a considerable value on landscape; unfortunately the proposed development would be on one of the highest points of Burton Green and, consistent with other comments in the overall proposals, this would have a very high landscape value which does not appear to have been factored into the decision to choose this particular site.
5. assuming that the development would be of typical modern build properties, they would be wholly out of character with the rest of the village and the development would be in danger of becoming a ghetto separate from the rest of the village. If there is to be development in Burton Green, which I am not opposed to as a matter of principle (subject to my other comments above), it should be small scale developments in a wide variety of locations in the village to enable new residents to integrate as quickly as possible into the existing community instead of looking at a single site to meet the requirements. This would have the added benefit that those sites currently discarded for access reasons, in particular, could again be suitable development sites.
6.the proposals do mention HS2 in passing but , assuming that this development goes ahead where it is currently planned, it will be very heavily affected during the construction phase and once complete; this alone would call into question, in my mind, its suitability for development.
You will, I am sure, gather from the foregoing that, while, as I say above, not opposed to development in Burton Green per se, the current proposal seems to me to be poorly thought through and wholly unsuitable