Planning Strategy, West Council, Fornham St. Martin, House, Suffolk, Western Way, , IP33 3YU

22nd December 2020

REFERENCE: COMMENTS ON WEST SUFFOLK LOCAL PLAN

Dear Sir/Madam, We realise that I have it very late to submit my comments on this initial public consultation on the Local Plan, however, although we consider ourselves IT literate, certain aspects of the online consultation process have caused us to spend many frustrated hours trying to submit comments or answer questions in the questionnaire, without being sure if our input had been saved and/or submitted to the consultation. For example,

As a result of this uncertainty, we are writing this letter to express our views on the initial consultation and will try to upload it to the consultation homepage. Therefore, we trust that my views will be taken into consideration as part of this initial round of public consultation on the development of a new Local Plan.

We also understand from the FAQ page on the Consultation homepage, that the ‘preferred options’ of the plan will be available for public consultation in late 2021, which is much- appreciated, and we would urge West Suffolk Council to try to make the IT for this next round of consultation less complicated, much more user-friendly and the instructions for commenting online easier to understand.

We are residents of Fornham St. Martin, with a property which backs on to the golf course at and we have spent a great deal of time during 2019 and 2020, objecting to repeated versions of a planning application for holiday caravan lodges on part of this site, principally because if this application is allowed and permanent/semi-permanent development on the golf course site proceeds, we believe this will set a precedent for additional development on the site in future years and potentially even the closure of the golf course, the sale of the site and approval for the land to be used for housing or commercial development. This golf course is an important green space integral to /maintaining the visual gap between the Fornham’s (Fornham All Saints, Fornham St. Genevieve and Fornham St. Martin) and Bury St. Edmunds; a visual gap which is all the more important since the development at Marham Park. Without retention of green spaces such as the All Saint’s golf course site and the few areas of remaining green space in the Fornham’s, these villages will simply coalesce with Bury St. Edmunds and lose their separate semi-rural identity, becoming merely outer sub-urban areas of the town.

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This segues into our comments on the Local Plan. We are not ‘NIMBYs’ and we are not objecting to any further development in the Fornham’s or in any other locations in West Suffolk. We understand that ‘No Development’ is not an option and that additional housing and commercial sites are required to sustain the growing population, the economy and needs of West Suffolk well into this century. However, the imperative is to ensure that appropriate choices are made regarding where to and where not to place new housing and commercial developments

1) Regarding the broad options for distribution of growth in West Suffolk

Our preferred option is very much Option 2: to focus development in the towns and key service centres where infrastructure and environmental constraints allow.

And in terms of the hierarchy of our preferences: Option 2 > Option 3 > Option 1 > Option 4.

Whilst under Option 1, there could be a case made for a single, substantial new settlement (village or town) developed from scratch in West Suffolk, I believe this should be limited to a single site. The concern with this option, as with Options 3 and 4 i.e., infilling within and dispersing new development between existing towns, service centres and villages, is that over time, towns and their surrounding villages begin to coalesce with essentially no visual gap or green spaces between them.

This is how the urban conurbations of greater London, Surry, Berkshire, the West Midlands, and the greater Manchester area began – we do not wish to be party to the concreting over of East Anglia in the way that much of the South East of already has been. An example is where I grew up; thanks to development creep, Hitchin and Letchworth Garden City are now essentially joined, as are and Knebworth and in other counties: Bedford and Kempston, Milton Keynes, Bletchley, and Wolverton – the list of examples is considerable.

Additional population and commercial requirements should, to the extent possible, be focused in existing population centres, ideally utilising brown field sites, so that the countryside can remain the countryside and villages can remain villages.

2) Regarding sites in Fornham St. Martin identified for discussion/further evaluation: see appended below, our comments and concerns are as follows:

Fornham_St_Martin local plan.pdf

Site WS216 This land is currently a farmer’s field (agricultural land used for growing crops) and a major flood plain, which multiple times a year floods to the point of incursion onto the B1106 that

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traverses the village. We cannot believe that building on this land would be a sensible option for this reason alone, and could lead to more severe flooding throughout the village, driven by climate change. The site itself is also very large, and the temptation would we feel, therefore be to site many hundreds of dwellings thereon, effectively creating estates on both sides of the B1106, which would hugely alter the character of the village, making it more like a small town.

In addition, increasing the number of dwelling by some hundreds in the Fornham’s without providing other village amenities (e.g., a shop(s), a post office, a health centre, etc) would simply increase traffic as more people would be driving into Bury St. Edmunds itself to access these amenities.

Sites WS081 and WS570 These sites are currently low-grade agricultural land used for grazing horses, etc and provide much-needed ‘breaks’ within the village, in between housing. Firstly, we would not wish the owners of this land/the people who maintain their horses thereon to be forced into compulsory sale of their land to WSC for development. That aside, we appreciate that it would be possible for the siting of small clusters of houses on some of these sites, which are relatively unobtrusive and do not fill the sites (e.g., akin to the small number of houses recently built in Fornham All Saint’s on off the double roundabout at the junction of the A1101, the B1106 and Tut Hill). This would be acceptable and would not we believe, materially impact the character of the village.

Sites WS552, WS543 and WS035 Whilst accepting that a small cluster(s) of a limited number of houses could be developed on one of these sites, our view is that development should be restricted to just one of these sites, probably WS035 and that the creation of estate housing is resisted. Again, all three or even two of these sites are developed, this end of Fornham St. Martin will essentially coalesce into the tollgate area of Bury St. Edmunds, which is not acceptable. Note: we understand that these sites in the Barton Hill area are regarded as part of Fornham St. Martin, but part of Bury St. Edmunds. This is unacceptable and I’m afraid suggest tactic in order to permit expansion outwards from the town towards Fornham St. Martin whilst saying that the village is not expanding outwards towards the town, yet the effect is the same – coalescence.

3) Regarding sites in Fornham All Saints identified for discussion/further evaluation: see appended below, our comments and concerns are as follows:

Fornham_All_Saints_R edacted local plan.pdf

Site WS051 Development of this site would essentially ‘fill in’ the green space in between Marham Park and Fornham All Saints, removing the visual gap and foster coalescence of the village with

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Bury St. Edmunds, not to mention increasing the pressure from traffic in and out of the new housing development and for access to Bury St. Edmunds and the A14.

4) Comment regarding choice of new housing types in villages

Regarding the mix of different types of housings, whilst we understand the need for affordable housing, the design and build of the housing erected on the corner of King’s Road and Parkway in Bury St. Edmunds, for example (see appended below), would definitely not be appropriate in the Fornham’s.

Low-cost, environmentally-friend

These properties looked/very nice when originally built, but age rapidly and particularly badly, such that within a very short space of time they are in desperate need of a full ‘makeover’ and look extremely shoddy and badly maintained. This type of build would not be/ suited to any sites in the Fornham’s.

In summary, we understand the need for additional development in West Suffolk, but we urge the council to restrict this growth to existing towns and main population centres and to preserve the integrity of our villages and the rural/semi-rural countryside in West Suffolk.

Yours faithfully,

Dr. Nicholas.L and Mrs. Jennifer C. Meyers

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