B&NES Council’s Planning Committee will resolve their response today to application: 21/05471/OUT Parcel 5159, Minsmere Road, Keynsham – Outline planning application for 70 homes (Use Class C3); new vehicular and pedestrian access on to Minsmere Road, public open space; tree planting and habitat creation; site drainage and associated infrastructure, with all matters reserved except for access. – Taylor Wimpey
B&NES Council’s Principle Planning Officer contacted SPC recently to state that in line with the scheme of delegation, the above application had been referred to the Chair/Vice Chair of B&NES Council’s Planning Committee. They have determined that the application should be decided by the Planning Committee and not delegated to B&NES Council officers for a decision..
Agenda and details of the meeting can be found on the B&NES Council website here
You can also watch on B&NES Council’s Youtube channel https://youtube.com/BathnesCouncil
In January 2021, SPC was consulted on this planning application and resolved to strongly object to the proposals. It resolved its response to B&NES Council as follows:
OBJECT: Saltford Parish Council objected to planning application 18/02899/OUT which was subsequently withdrawn by the applicant and the case for the Parish Council’s objection still stands, i.e. existing traffic congestion confirmed by the B&NES Senior Highways Development Control Engineer’s objection, no exceptional circumstances to justify bringing this forward before Core Strategy developments and the necessary local infrastructure improvements have been implemented, etc.
This planning application contravenes the Prime Minister’s public statement on 6th October 2021 that new homes should be built on brown field sites where homes make sense, NOT green field sites. That statement by the Prime Minister was: “you can also see how much room there is to build the homes that young families need in this country. Not on green fields, not just jammed in the South East, but beautiful homes on brown field sites in places where homes make sense.” Saltford Parish Council therefore asks B&NES Council to respect national planning policy for where new homes are located as re-emphasised by the Prime Minister and stop the continual over-development of Keynsham and therefore refuse outline planning permission.
The over-development of Keynsham is already causing regular gridlock to traffic within the town’s main and side roads over prolonged periods of the working/commuting day that overspills through Saltford on the Bath Road (A4) and the country lanes between our two communities. That problem of insufficient road capacity needs to be rectified before any further new housing developments are considered at Keynsham East or Keynsham and the surrounding area.
In any event no planning permission should be considered for safeguarded Green Belt land before the Local Plan Partial Update (LPPU) Public Examination outcome has been determined. There are no exceptional circumstances to bring this forward and it is not for developers to pre-empt LPA decisions on Local Plans for where and when new housing should be built in an LPA area.
B&NES Council will be aware that Saltford Parish Council, in its response to the draft LPPU consultation, asked that a sub-regional “ecological recovery and development land trade” approach be considered for the West of England area so that new housing developments are built in the right locations with low carbon transport infrastructure on previously developed brownfield sites and the biodiversity improvements are created elsewhere in those LPAs like B&NES Council that are short of brownfield sites but have green field sites suitable for ecological recovery and protecting food security etc. The Minister of State for Housing welcomed such an approach in his letter dated 10.12.2021 to Rt Hon. Jacob Rees-Mogg MP.
To enable unsustainable development planning applications to be rejected at an earlier stage, Saltford Parish Council asks B&NES Council to use its discussions with WECA on a sub-regional approach to ecological recovery, i.e., via a system of ecological recovery and development land trading, as a matter of urgency. This will enable the West of England to meet housing need (not demand) in places where homes make sense.
New public parks, not just small, grassed areas with a few trees, should accompany and be located in the immediate vicinity of new housing developments. This would help ensure existing green spaces such as those along the River Avon valley are not inundated with high numbers of visitors including day-trippers on hot weather weekends, disrupting or destroying wildlife habitat in the process; this has increasingly been the experience of recent years.
Saltford Parish Council asks that this application be determined by the B&NES Council Planning Committee as it is:
(a) an unnecessary second attempt to override the B&NES Local Plan before it has been updated that if permitted would call into question the legitimacy of B&NES Council’s local planning consultation process (as described in (d) below) and would also directly contravene national planning policy as re-iterated by the Prime Minister in October 2021;
(b) Keynsham and the surrounding area’s insufficient transport infrastructure needs to be improved before any further new housing developments of this scale are permitted;
(c) Keynsham lacks sufficient green space for both (i) ecological/wildlife recovery and (ii) recreation, as a result of new developments in recent years; and
(d) B&NES Council should not pre-empt the Inspector’s findings on the forthcoming public examination of the proposed LPPU for this parcel of land by permitting this application. Such a decision would call into question the legitimacy of B&NES Council’s local planning process, particularly on a controversial development like this that has gained widespread opposition from the local community during the LPPU consultation and the previous planning application for this site (18/02899/OUT).