Issue and Options 2023

Future Housing plans: Re the future housing proposals, we believe that it makes more sense to create wholly new developments in order to economically create the associated infrastructure that they will require at the time of their inception and also enable infrastructure planning for the future. It makes little sense to us to create moderate numbers of new homes in areas where there is already insufficient infrastructure to support existing housing needs. For example, in the area that we represent, the sewage and drainage system can no longer cope with the additional housing that has been built over the past 20 or so years and there is no apparent appetite on SDC’s behalf to facilitate improvements. When the weather’s dry, the sewage is of sufficiently small quantities that it can be tankered away. When the weather’s wet, the sewage and rain runoff outflows blow the covers off the manholes and flows downhill into the River Blythe, which, as you well know (although choose to forget in the consultation document) is a SSSI. There is little or no parking at the railway stations in the area. Wood End Station has parking for around 6 vehicles, The Lakes Station can possibly accommodate 4 vehicles parked on the road and Earlswood Station has parking for around 12 vehicles. None of these stations has any further land resource that can be used for additional parking. The idea of creating housing along the rail corridor that runs through our area is perhaps convenient for the preparation of a third rate plan but, in reality, will create more issues than it will solve in this particular area. Most residents wish to travel either to Redditch or Solihull and not to Stratford or Birmingham. There is a bus that traverses the route between Redditch and Solihull once per week. The small numbers of rail users using these stations amply demonstrates that neither Birmingham nor Stratford feature as major destinations from this area. There is only one school in the parish and it is heavily oversubscribed. We point this out to evidence the fact that the local communities cannot continue adding housing without substantial improvements to the infrastructure and SDC seems, from past history, unwilling to countenance this expenditure. Therefore, it makes more sense to plan for larger conurbations where the appropriate infrastructure can be incorporated into the plans. Re all the housing figures that are bandied about in the consultation document, where is the evidence that these future population projections are correct? This appears to us to be “the back of a fag packet” calculation and doesn’t seem to take account of the large numbers of those who have passed away over the last couple of years due to Covid. The projected population figures need to be reworked and evidenced independently before meaningful proposals can be considered. The document emphasises the negatives in this future plan. There’s little or no balance in its content. Why not sell it by using the positives instead of asking about the negative effects? Putting forward some coherent proposals as to what you, the professional planners, would like to see and the reasons for those proposals would be a much better approach in our opinion. This should include the positives of each proposal including location benefits and approaches as to how new sites would be developed with the appropriate explanations. We non-professional planners would then have a much better understanding of what’s wanted or proposed. We understand that the largish developments outlined in the current Core Strategy (e.g. Gaydon and Long Marsden) have not produced the numbers of houses that the Core Strategy proposed. As these areas will, presumably, have the infrastructure laid down, these should be the heart of future development for the SDC part of the combined document. Brownfield Land We wholeheartedly support the development of brownfield sites. However, as in the past, we anticipate that SDC/WDC will ignore this asset as the builders will oppose this on costs basis. CPRE has figures that indicate that over 1 million new homes could be built on brownfield sites nationally if local planners had a mind or desire to push in that direction. We ask what happens when we develop so much agricultural land at the expense cleaning up brownfield sites that we cannot feed the population? Ah, with the Government’s current position re agriculture, this is already the case. SDC/WDC should become a beacon in this respect and design a plan that redevelops brownfield sites as a priority. Reference the possibility of SDC/WDC taking some of the Birmingham / Black County housing development shortfall, we would oppose it except and insofar as Brownfield sites were recommissioned for this use. There is a whole Core Strategy’s worth of Brownfield sites in the Birmingham / Black Country are that’s just crying out for redevelopment. Consult with these areas and find out why they won’t insist on redevelopment plans for the area. Green Belt Land You identify land around Earlswood ward and at Wood End as potential sites for development. I was registered to speak at the last Core Strategy inspection and the points that were raised by both our and Tanworth Residents’ Associations re the future development of Green Belt site were sufficiently strong to cause the Inspector to require SDC Planning to go away and rethink this strategy. The Inspector made it absolutely clear to SDC that the Gren Belt was non-negotiable and shouldn’t be meddled with. It’s not obvious to us that this position has altered over the past 10 years. We do not understand why the Green Belt is even being considered as being up for grabs in any future development planning. There’s plenty of non Green Belt land within SDC/WDC’s area of control that can be developed – especially the Brown Field land. Identifying the land around Wood End and up towards Forshaw Heath for a modest sized development has further complications for you to consider. You state in the supporting documents that there are no SSSIs in the area. Either, you have deliberately obfuscated the truth or your research is very poor. The area mentioned above has a number of natural springs that form the source of the River Blythe which is a SSSI for 25 miles due to its clay bed. You will need to take this into consideration when considering your future planning requirements.

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Energy Resources & Zero Carbon Emissions Our thought on this section are that it’s been written by someone who does not have a full understanding of their topic. There is no mention of hydrogen as a source of power – either it’s various forms of generation or use. Nor is there any very positive treatment of solar energy. Your analysis indicates that the use of solar panels on domestic or commercial buildings appears to be very low. Why is this when solar technology is currently increasing the efficiency of the panels at a high rate. Solar panels should form a major source of carbon free power going forward with micro hubs distributing the electricity around neighbourhoods and then buying from, or feeding surpluses, into the grid should be given the highest priority.

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In summary, we feel that your documents are weak on hard facts which makes it difficult to provide meaningful comment. All the facts that you quote should indicate the reference from where they were evidenced. We further believe that SDC should be making the running in suggesting what’s needed, rather that posing far too many fairly nebulous questions, presumably in the hope that there will be some useful nuggets coming to the fore, or creating a situation where the average reader loses the will to live before reaching the end! We also feel that SDC should have produced this project alone on the basis that SDC decided not to join up with WDC due to disagreements on planning issues. We would also make the observation that this is a lengthy set of documents that obviously took a large number of people a while to compose. Is it therefore reasonable that the consultation is done so quickly? Reviewing planning documents is not something that’s in most peoples’ regular remits whilst making a life and a living for themselves and their families.