Outline permission with Environmental Statement for the erection of up to 381 dwellings, 0.68ha of land to accommodate a care home, 1.1ha of land for employment uses, 0.35ha of land to accommodate a community building and car park, improvements to existing playing pitches, public open space, woodland planting, sustainable drainage systems and ancillary works, with means of access of two primary access points onto the B3130 for approval, all other matters (other access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale) reserved for subsequent approval | Land North Of Southfield Road Trading Estate Clevedon Road Nailsea
Nailsea Action Group objects to this application as outlined below.
It will be said that new housing has always taken over open green space, but those were times when the interdependency of the environment with the well-being, if not the survival, of the human race, was very little understood. What may have been the accepted case in former times – even relatively recently – cannot be said to be so now, and should not, for the good of all people and creatures, be applied to every, or possibly any, case made for building. The houses that the country’s population is deemed to need should only be built where there is the least possible detrimental impact on the immediate environment. The north Nailsea site carries far from such a description.
In the last fifty years 73% of the world’s natural habitat has been lost to urban and agricultural development. The north Nailsea site is tiny by comparison, and may be considered and argued to be insignificant globally, but it is the relentless chipping away at the natural habitat that eventually aggregates to a quantity that means that life as we, or our children and grandchildren, know it will become unsustainable.
Even if the green belt in which the site currently sits is re-classified as grey belt under current government proposals, almost no amount of justification and advertised affordable mitigation and remediation will change the following:-
- The impact of the site’s boundary, however much softened by parkland and attenuation ponds, on the surrounding countryside and the habitat it provides for many creatures, some relatively rare including otters and owls, and the creatures they feed on. This development needs to be seen in the round, the consequential destruction of the area in the context of being yet another albeit tiny contributor to the destruction of the planet and its human inhabitants. Ultimately the overall food chain ends in us. When the chain is broken or destroyed, so will we be in the end. And it will be the end.
- The impact of the site within its boundaries on the ecology of the area particularly on its invasion by a significant road cutting the site in two, including an ancient and life-sustaining hedgerow, and destroying the habitats and foraging routes of many small creatures. Evidence from other recently developed areas of Nailsea suggest that the alternative pathways and locations for these provided by the developers are not adopted, and the creatures either desert or die. More explicitly, the loss of good quality farmland directly affects the human food supply.
- The impact on the quality of the water in the river (Land Yeo), especially as it subsequently passes through the nearby SSSI.
- The impact of the increased traffic particularly on the B3130 past the notorious pinch point at Stone Edge Batch (via which traffic heads for both junctions 19 and 20 of the M5 motorway), and the already very busy road through Tickenham. On every road into Nailsea from outside it there are significant pinch points making the town a very unsuitable location for a significant increase in population, which is what is happening cumulatively, without any appropriate, foreseeable or planned meaningful mitigation or remediation. It is said that infrastructure development will follow house building, but, contrary to what happens in many other European countries where it precedes house building, this rarely happens here and certainly not in North Somerset or Nailsea, and is not planned to precede or follow at any significant level.
- Despite attenuation ponds and SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems) which will be clearly insufficient as currently planned, the impact of potential flooding in the area to the new houses and, more likely, to the older ones immediately to the south of the site, with the resulting damage, distress and cost this generates not least increased by the local sewerage system overflowing into homes, and the common overall consequential inability of the homeowners to acquire affordable insurance, or any insurance at all.
- Green belt or grey belt, the impact of effectively joining two separate communities – Wraxall and Nailsea – together, with the threat echoed to the south of Nailsea by the Gleesons development between it and Backwell.
- The impact on local historic houses such as Birdcombe Court (The Tower House).
There are (as at 14th October) nearly 282 public comments on the consultation website for this proposed development. 97% object, 2% support (1% neither). However pressed the democratically elected North Somerset Council is to meet targets and generate revenue, it is to be hoped that recognising this level of response, which includes many expert analyses of the potential outcomes for this site if built on, will help convince councillors that this is a planning application in particular that cannot be approved.
Land North Of Southfield Road Trading Estate, Clevedon Road, Nailsea/Nailsea Holdings LVA LLP (381 houses) 24/P/1586/OU2