While still awaiting the planning inspector’s final report South
Glos council appear to have pre-empted its contents and have moved
the planning process forward with the development control committee conducting
a site visit at Park farm on Friday 28th September.
One must assume that such site ‘inspections’ are an
important and essential part of the process councillors undergo when seeking to
arrive at decisions of such magnitude, which will have an irreversible effect on many
peoples lives, and particularly as some of the committee will be unfamiliar with
the site and its many nuances. However examination of the inspection programme
for Friday 28th might lead you to think otherwise.
The programme includes a total of six planning applications,
two of which relate to Park Farm. One for 500 houses with the second being an application of preventative guesswork hoping to stop all these new homes and the rest of us flooding at the first sign of anything more than a passing shower.
Leaving the council offices Thornbury at 0930 the committee are initially bussed around four locations from Tockington to Little Stoke visiting small sites with applications comprising of a single story extension and 2 semi’s plus 2 flats.
Leaving the council offices Thornbury at 0930 the committee are initially bussed around four locations from Tockington to Little Stoke visiting small sites with applications comprising of a single story extension and 2 semi’s plus 2 flats.
At 11.05 the committee take a coffee break prior to
commencing the Park Farm inspection at 11.55 for no more than one hour on site
before returning to the council offices in Thornbury by 1300.
The development area proposed at Park Farm equates to 26
hectares, or in old money an awful lot of acres. It is a flood plain, forms
part of the ancient deer park relating to Thornbury castle, contains locally and
nationally listed monuments, is ecologically extremely valuable containing many
important and protected species, is high grade agricultural land, is many
hundreds of years in the making – how on earth can they be expected to become familiar with such a large valuable site and gain sufficient feel and knowledge
to make a decision of such magnitude in less time than it takes to view a few
extensions and flats and literally the same space of time as a coffee break.
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