Rushy Bank - just facts please

Tue 15 Sep 2015, 19:54 (last edited on Tue 15 Sep 2015, 21:06)

I've just returned from a holiday to find that the Rushy Bank application has come back faster than a Scottish referendum. It is claimed that the original 'planning event' was attended by 115 people and that 'there was a lot of support for the scheme at the public event'. I have no cause to question the number of attendees but I have to say that when I was there, there were only two other visitors and they were both vocal in their opposition.

At 2.5.6 in their 'Statement of Community Involvement', they say: 'Most concerns came from the newly formed Friends of the Evenlode Valley, a group set up by adjacent neighbours, several of whom have only recently moved to the Town.' I don't know who is being referred to but I am of course as shocked as anyone to learn that the group was set up not just by neighbours but ones that are actually adjacent to each other. And then there's the matter of some of these objectors having come from Somewhere Else and without the decency of a vested interest, other than a concern for the surrounding natural landscape.

What I find disingenuous is the claim (at 3.1) that the feedback has 'informed the evolution of the planning application.' We are told, amongst other things, that there will be fewer houses, that there will be improved highway safety 'as a result of the proposed extension of the 30 mph zone and addition of a new junction that will assist by slowing traffic entering the town', and that the site has 'natural boundaries which preclude further expansion and its setting is distinctly different from the open nature of the surrounding AONB.'

The fact that there would be fewer houses hardly makes the application more palatable to those who believe that there is no justification for building an estate on a greenfield site, one that the council has repeatedly deemed inappropriate for that purpose. It is not the number of houses that has been a bone of contention but where they are built. When it comes to road safety, I am actually more concerned than I was last time round and I do not believe that zoning and a new junction will resolve the increased road safety issues. Nor do I believe that it's possible to ignore the need for more pavement along the stretch of the development, in which case I can't see how it's possible to continue with two-way traffic on that road. The suggestion that the site has 'natural boundaries which preclude further expansion' is also woefully unconvincing. I was under the impression that council officers had made it perfectly clear at the last planning committee that they could offer no clear solution to the issue of precedent. That's hardly surprising; it's what happens with a precedent.