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ID sylw: 90334

Derbyniwyd: 23/02/2025

Ymatebydd: Miss Julia Gibson

Bearley is a country village that grew up around the wartime airfield and holiday camp and because there were jobs at the sorely missed Midland Shires Farmers/Countrywide Farmers mill and store that was closed down in 2017. It is a true village community in spirit and has a thriving village hall but lacks a community shop for essentials. It provides homes for private owners and also for housing scheme occupants. The oldest part of the village includes listed buildings. We are proud of our heritage and of our environment and properties are well maintained and do not change hands very often. Many people and families have lived here for generations and are connected in many diverse ways with agriculture and rural employment.

We have had several small new developments within the village recently, which despite initial concerns mostly fit well into the village. However, a serious negative impact has been the ongoing problems with the drains and sewage smell at Gwen’s Grove, which is the fault of the developers and has still not been satisfactorily dealt with by Severn Trent. Developers MUST be legally held to account if/when they fail to fulfil their commitments. These small new groups of dwellings are to be welcomed around any village in South Warwickshire so that other people can have the pleasure of living in this lovely part of the world. They usually do not have a negative impact on the villages. This is the way villages evolve, in an organic and ongoing sustainable manner. Surely, the way to provide new homes is by adding small developments to villages, so that incoming people become part of the community, not part of the destruction of the countryside? The SWLP recognises this fact in 4.3 Small Scale Development…

Country people are not NIMBY but we know what works in the countryside and what doesn’t, and what doesn’t work is to effectively destroy any village community by surrounding it with the huge development being suggested for Bearley. We do not need new towns in this area. We need manageable small developments that enhance the villages and include a manageable amount of houses ‘affordable’ to families starting out or on lower incomes. Towns can only prosper if they develop organically around existing infrastructure and employment, they do not spring up successfully by building approx. 6,800 new houses in an area that cannot handle such growth. Such a development would destroy the existing community and create an urban sprawl: any incoming people will not benefit by living in the countryside with all its advantages, so there would be little point in wiping out such countryside in order to house unhappy people. I believe that consideration is given to larger developments because the developers make less profit on small scale development as opposed to large scale development.

The reference in 4.2 Potential New Settlements is naive: ‘The aim of a new settlement in planning terms is to deliver a new community that can fulfil most of its day to day needs within the settlement itself, limiting the need to travel.’ This simply does not work, as spectacularly evidenced by the Long Marston development south of Stratford upon Avon, which has been halted specifically because of the traffic problems created by the residents NOT staying on site for employment, shops etc, but driving out of the development to their daily work and to the supermarkets around Stratford. The required infrastructure was not in place before the development was started and completed. This is not acceptable in either moral or planning terms.

Bearley in particular is totally unsuited to this suggested development for the following reasons:
• The Green Belt and Wildlife. 4.9 Green Belt quotes two of the purposes of green belt as follows:
o c) to assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment;
o d) to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns;

This proposed development would infringe both of those purposes and is a therefore a totally wrong development of the Green Belt, which is clearly in place to safeguard the nature of such communities, to provide food for the country’s population, agricultural jobs for existing people and a habitat for British wildlife. We have ancient woodland here, SSSI’s, red kites, buzzards, deer, as well as birds, foxes, badgers, hedges and useful plants. These currently co-exist happily with agriculture, farmers being the uncredited stewards of such wildlife. A huge number of species would be displaced by such a development – where are they to go? Developers may promise schemes to provide suitable adjacent habitat but this is impossible to enforce as it is costly to developers and experience shows that developers are seldom held to account for ignoring their commitments. Wildlife thrives in the places it chooses, which is why it is already here in this area in a field system that has been responsibly farmed for centuries. Ref Strategic Objective 12: Protecting and enhancing our environmental assets (related to overarching principle - A biodiverse and environmentally resilient South Warwickshire) this cannot be met if you wipe out hectares of existing green belt and biodiversity. There cannot be any ‘exceptional circumstances’ that suggest that this land should be released from the Green Belt. Nor is there any justification for calling the area ‘Grey Belt’.

• Infrastructure. The area already lacks infrastructure in the form of accessible local shops, doctor’s surgeries and small local hospitals and crime prevention. We do not believe that sufficient new infrastructure will be provided for even existing residents, let alone to support such an influx of new people and their requirements.
o Shopping for food is already a problem as it is difficult to get into Stratford (even on public transport) because of the slow and traffic-clogged Birmingham Road, which has been badly designed and ineffectually tampered with over the years. Stratford town centre is dying because of the big stores on the Maybird estate and on the southern ring road. The only way to provide enough shopping, particularly for food, will be to build even more big stores outside Stratford, which will kill the town centre completely. Even tourism will struggle if people are unable, or more likely unwilling, to get into the town centre. And people will use online food delivery, bringing more delivery vehicles into a development and clogging up the streets.
o The Police presence is also seriously lacking in this area and attention by the Police to rural crime is mostly non-existent. The village police stations in places such as Henley in Arden have long been closed and local people have no immediate physical access to local law enforcement. It needs a massive increase in police officers for the existing population; adding 6,800 new homes will totally overwhelm any law enforcement measures currently available and unlikely to be provided. [redacted]
o Schools. We are told that this size development would require one new secondary school and three to four new primary schools, yet only one new
primary school is proposed and no new secondary school. This is unsustainable.

• Traffic. The A3400 currently just about copes with the volume of traffic at peak times between Stratford and Birmingham via Henley in Arden, although it is dangerous for pedestrians to try to cross at peak times and Henley is a bottleneck. The country lanes are used as rat runs and are becoming dangerous. A prime example is Pettiford Lane at Wootton Wawen, which now hosts large volumes of traffic at peak times and is indicative of what is already happening on Langley Road and Salters Lane in Bearley. This further erodes the rural nature of the area and impedes agricultural and pleasure driving by tourists. And it only takes a few downpours to flood underneath the railway bridges on both these lanes, making them impassable and forcing traffic back onto the A3400. The suggested new town will not stop people owning cars and there will be probably 10,000 new vehicles in the area, all trying to use a traffic system that is currently starting to show signs of being overwhelmed.

• Flooding. Draft Policy J - Reducing Flood Risk: ‘New development should be prioritised to areas of lowest flood risk, i.e. the areas that are least prone to flooding in event of a heavy rains or storms and must not increase flood risk elsewhere.’ Bearley has in the past been flooded in the village itself and regularly on the roads during winter, and increasingly in summer as a result of summer rains, it suffers from flooding in the surrounding fields and roads. The roads are particularly prone to flooding by the village hall, under the bridge by Bearley Railway Station, in several places on the Birmingham Road and also Langley Road and Salters Lane as mentioned above. The road to Snitterfield is similarly impassable at times. There has been no effort at solving these problems for existing settlements in the area. We do not believe that any developers will commit the sort of money required to (a) solve the existing problems, and (b) put in place sufficient systems to divert away from Bearley the floodwater arising from any new development away from Bearley village. The proposed development does not accord with Draft Policy J - Reducing Flood Risk: ‘New development should be prioritised to areas of lowest flood risk, i.e. the areas that are least prone to flooding in event of a heavy rains or storms and must not increase flood risk elsewhere.’

• Light pollution and quality of life. This area currently has the benefit of a dark enough sky to see the stars on a clear night. There will be a huge amount of light pollution from such a development, which is well-documented to adversely affect not only human health and wellbeing but also endangers wildlife. I do not believe that Strategic Objective 10: Improving the health, safety and quality of life of our communities (related to overarching principle- A healthy, safe and inclusive South Warwickshire) can be met by destroying an existing community.

• Railway Station. The presence of Bearley station is a wholly insufficient reason to choose the village for development. This is a very small platform and shelter and carries very few passengers. There is insufficient suitable parking and no room to provide more. To the south it is essentially a dead end as it only goes as far as Stratford town, the original Honeybourne/Evesham railway line having been dismantled many years ago. The other two lines are unsuitable for large numbers of passengers and most trains are only a few carriages long: To the north it goes through all the villages en route to Birmingham, a slow journey, stopping at each station. The north east/easterly line is not a direct route, having to change at Hatton to get to any major towns like Birmingham or London, or even just to Leamington and Warwick. The rolling stock is outdated and uncomfortable. Massive investment would be needed in the station itself and, indeed, the whole rail structure, which would be totally unjustified by the small amount of people who might use it for travel to work. The majority will use their cars and clog up the roads. I do not see how Strategic Objective 11: Connecting people to places (related to overarching principle: A well-connected South Warwickshire) can be met regarding connecting people to nature if you have already wiped out hectares of green belt, wildlife and beauty.

• Employment. There is already insufficient employment of a sustainable nature in this area. Stratford was once a flourishing market town with major employers – NC Joseph, Stratford Canners, Bird’s Foods, Flowers Brewery, IDC and HDC. This is no longer the case. Even the important cattle market has been closed without being relocated locally. Destruction of local agriculture would lead to further job losses and does not meet your claims in 6.7 Supporting Rural Employment and Diversification. Building large trading estates would not solve the problem. They provide very few jobs other than warehousing and some office work. People coming to live in a new town would still have to drive out daily to Birmingham, Warwick and Leamington, Coventry etc.

• Tourism. The importance of Stratford’s tourist industry to the prosperity of the area cannot be underestimated. The town has a unique tourist appeal, not just pulling in visitors for the Shakespeare aspect but also for the local rural charm enjoyed in the approaches to Stratford through villages and the green belt. Rural charm will cease to exist in a huge housing development on the northern approach and this will adversely impact on tourism and visitors from Birmingham. The proximity to the Cotswolds has also historically had huge appeal to visitors but the same overbuilding and population increase is taking place on the so-called ‘Gateway to the Cotswolds’ in the south of the town. And the problem already mentioned of the slow death of the town centre will only exacerbate the damage to the ‘Stratford upon Avon Experience’: visitors want to walk around a thriving town, to mingle with the locals and spend their money in enticing shops, not wander around a dying town that accommodates endless cafes, pasta restaurants and charity shops. The RST and Shakespeare’s Birthplace may not be sufficiently appealing on their own merits in the future. I do not believe that Strategic Objective 9: Enriching the tourism potential (related to overarching principle- A well-designed and beautiful Warwickshire) can be met if the countryside is built over.