green & pleasant Thornbury

Why have they preferred to wait!!

On Friday May 6th of this year Barratt Developments submitted a planning application to South Gloucestershire Council for approximately 500 houses on land at Park Farm. Par for the course is that developers can expect applications of this size to be decided within thirteen weeks. If the local authority does not come to a conclusion within this period the applicant is entitled to appeal to the Secretary of State to make the decision either for or against.

It is now approximately twenty eight weeks since the May 6th. Why, might you ask has no decision been made by South Gloucestershire Council or why, is there no appeal from Barratts. In the absence of a formal explanation being provided by either party we can only hazard a guess.

At the time of the application the planning policy for Thornbury was that no development would be allowed outside the existing urban boundary, which in simple terms meant Park Farm could not be built on. In addition to this restriction a planning inspector in 2006 concluded that Park Farm would be the worst possible option for development in Thornbury.

Why then in May of this year was the application not rejected?

We are spoon fed the vague excuse, by those who allegedly represent us, that the current planning policy is losing its potency and will be replaced by the much stronger Core Strategy when approved by the planning inspector. You might say ‘what’s that got to do with it, the rules that applied in May should have meant instant rejection’.

Could it be that our representatives who chose to include Park Farm in the Core Strategy were making an off the beam assumption that the planning inspector would have completed his examination by the middle of this year with everything being tickety boo. They could then soldier on without breaking step, regardless of the deep unpopularity of this proposal.

How wrong could they be, just about as wrong as selecting Park Farm in the first place, as evidenced by the myriad of objections from all parts of Thornbury.

Could it be that since May various National and Government bodies have opened such a ‘Pandora’s Box’ of intractable and as yet unresolved issues, which might not eventually be capable of mitigation, interested parties need to rethink the whole proposal?

Whatever the real reason for the current status of Barratts application wouldn’t it have been so much better if the people of Thornbury were treated as intelligent adults and kept informed about progress on such a significant issue for the town, as recently suggested by Independent councillors. A suggestion unfortunately defeated by the majority on the town council.

Having failed to use that opportunity to enlighten us there is still time for them to take a page from the Independent’s book and use one of the many communication avenues available to them – they can even add a comment to this website. That at least would demonstrate they are willing to engage with their constituents, now and possibly in the future, as opposed to continuing with the intransigent attitude of the past.


NB An update on the flooding issue from the Association of British Insurers.

On 18th October, Nick Starling the Director General of Insurance and Health, in a response to the Draft National Planning Policy said;

‘The drive towards giving local communities more say about what is built and where must include safeguards to ensure that developments are not built in flood risk areas, so we can avoid the nightmare scenario of unsaleable, uninsurable and uninhabitable properties'.

South Glos Council we hope you are listening.