BASE HEADER

Gwrthwynebu

ID sylw: 6845

Derbyniwyd: 23/09/2009

Ymatebydd: SEAN DEELY

In order to deliver the housing and employment development land required as a result of the allocation provided by the Regional Spatial Strategy, the option that is proposed requires the loss of high quality agricultural land, for example the land to the south of Harbury Lane, Woodside farm and the current area of restraint along Europa Way.

The Tach Brook valley has great natural beauty and provides natural separation helping to give Bishops Tachbrook a village identity, which it has managed to maintain over many hundreds of years. This separation and identify will be significantly eroded if the farmland to the south of Harbury Lane developed for housing and employment land, as proposed.

This preferred option proposal does not recognise the rising concerns over world population growth and the view recently expressed by Hilary Benn, that as a nation we need to prepare for being self sufficient in food production.
The assessment that have been carried out on the available sites needs a detailed further review. An alternative study carried out by professionally qualified fellow villager Ray Bullen (Ray has submitted a summary of his study to you) has concluded that the potential for a number of these sites is somewhat different to the picture presented in the Preferred Options Paper. This demonstrates that there is the potential to reduce the proportion of Grade 2 agricultural land from 88% to 57%. This difference of professional opinion needs to be resolved before this can be taken further.