North Somerset Local Plan Pre-commencement Document Consultation Responses Respondent Respondent Agent Name Comment Attached documents Name Organisation Brigly Under the heading Housing Requirement it is stated: The overall housing requirement to be accommodated in North Somerset using the standard method as the starting point. What does this mean? Is the council duty bound to allow developers to build more executive homes so that companies like Persimmons get their reward for huge donations to the Tory Party? Or can the council encourage housing that is really needed? ALAN SHAW Mr The scope of the consultation seems to be comprehensive as required however I think that as this has the potential to influence the development of NS for many years to come there should be clear commitment to both consultation and reporting to the wider community ( many of whom may not be involved in this consultation) and to this end full use should be made of the press and of regional meetings where the impact of change will be felt the hardest. Di Hassan I hope that the local plan will look at redrawing settlement boundaries to allow for recent developments and that the ruling will be established that NO developements will be allowed outside of the settlement boundary. Vic Slater 1. Point 10 of the Pre-commencement Document states that "The overall housing requirement to be accommodated in North Somerset using the standard method as the starting point." Page 1 of 328 6 May 2020 11:23:23 Respondent Respondent Agent Name Comment Attached documents Name Organisation Has the starting point referred to been adjusted since the original calculations to take account of BREXIT. If it hasn't, it should be, as the demand for housing will now be considerably reduced with less Europeans wanting to live in the UK. This matter should be referred back up to central government if it can't be addressed locally. 2.Why are there so many 4 and 5 bedroom houses being built on new developments when the housing demand is more focused on 1,2 and 3 bedrooms? If this is a matter of profitability, why doesn't the Council consider creating it's own Building force, as in the 50's. This would not reduce employment , as the same number of construction staff would be needed and it would also allow the correct sizes accommodation needs to be fulfilled, probably at more competitive prices. 3.I have heard of instances whereby developers have requested that the 10% figure placed on larger developments for affordable homes, is reduced as their profitability is suffering! Is this fair? 4. Why are developers allowed to defer building once they have received planning permission. I feel a time period of say 12 month maximum should be allowed and if within this time period, if site work had not commenced, planning should be withdrawn. A period to allow for completion should also be included to defer a developer from starting a project and then deferring it. 5. Point 12 of the report makes no reference to homeless people. The council are sitting on sufficient numbers of brownfield sites whereby basic starter units along the lines of Scandinavian structures could be built to help homeless people build themselves again. I would be interested in your response. Page 2 of 328 6 May 2020 11:23:23 Respondent Respondent Agent Name Comment Attached documents Name Organisation KRG22 With regard to the content of the programme, in my view one of the key pieces of research required to inform the new NS Local Plan is to establish precise statistics of where residents work, and how they currently travel to work. I suspect that will not surprisingly reveal that a substantial percentage of residents live in NS but work outside of the county, many in Bristol. That can then be extrapolated to illustrate the likely % of workers in new residential areas who will also make the same journey. Establishing the main employment locations of residents and travel distances involved will help to determine new locations for housing, infrastructure improvements and the overarching principle should be to locate housing as near as possible to where people work. It will support identification of environmental gains from appropriate siting of new residential areas aligned to employment and existing / improved public transport infrastructure. Secondly researching how people choose to commute and why so many travel by car, will help to highlight the inadequacies and improvements required to public transport, if the environment is to truly take centre stage in the plan. Rob Bryher North Somerset Under point 8, you say the purpose of the Local Plan is to deliver the number of Council homes needed. I personally think the number one concern of the plan should be how to use spatial planning to reduce carbon emissions. This has repercussions for how and whether developments are allowed if they merely continue to provide the same amount of car parking and private car use as is currently the case. We should also insist on the highest possible energy efficiency grade rather than settling for less. The plan must have a much greater emphasis on transport in this mix. It is the leading area of carbon emissions in the UK (and the only one currently growing or staying still) and is a vital part of planning anything at all. If there's no other realistic option than to drive, a planning Page 3 of 328 6 May 2020 11:23:23 Respondent Respondent Agent Name Comment Attached documents Name Organisation application should be refused, regardless of whether it is 1 dwelling or 1,000 dwellings. Under point 9, you state that the new plan will be "taking account of new priorities (such as addressing climate change)". I would suggest that this is not a "new priority" for the planning profession, it has been an active concern of policy for a number of years. I think you should consider changing this to "taking account of priorities that may be require greater urgency over the plan period (such as addressing climate change)". That's all I wanted to say. It's a climate EMERGENCY. Let's act like it and make this the number one priority in plan-making. Roger Higgins Flax Bourton Parish Council METHODOLOGY 1.The Joint Spatial Plan was predicated on a forecasted growth in the number of new jobs during the planning period - 82,500 across the four unitary authorities. In forecasting the number of new homes required in North Somerset the actual number of new jobs created should be taken into account and the forecast of number of new housing unts adjusted to reflect this. SPATIAL STRATEGY 2. It is likely that any employment growth will be centred on the Bristol conurbation and the selection of development sites should reflect this to avoid unnecessary travelling with a priority for public transport. A point made in many responses to the JSP - including Buiness South West and First Bus. Page 4 of 328 6 May 2020 11:23:23 Respondent Respondent Agent Name Comment Attached documents Name Organisation Peter Sloman Weston College Thank you for sight of this document and the opportunity to comment. With regard to initial feedback, Weston College would wish to see North Somerset's ambition for Weston -super- Mare to be a university town feature heavily and influence the place making, regeneration and employment strategies. We look forward to receiving the draft plan documents in due course. Sue Vallance Hello, the comment I would wish to make is that I am very pleased to see the protection of the environment mentioned in this document. So I don't believe that any future road building fits with a climate emergency. Transport needs should be based on buses and trains and deterring use of cars. Building a road across to Tickenham to speed drivers on to an already over crowded M5 seems ridiculous. I do not live in Tickenham so this is a general point related to such issues! There is a housing crisis but mainly that relates to rental costs and the lack of social housing. Both of these problems will not be solved by building low quality private housing estates on flood plains with fake offers of "affordable housing". Fake, as in not really affordable to people in genuine housing need. Thank you. Sue Vallance, Page 5 of 328 6 May 2020 11:23:23 Respondent Respondent Agent Name Comment Attached documents Name Organisation 15 Chestnut Road, Long Ashton. CLH Pipeline CLH Pipeline CLH Pipeline Systems.pdf System Ltd System Ltd Thank you for your email to CLH Pipeline System Ltd dated 10 March 2020 regarding the above. Please find attached a plan of our client’s apparatus. We would ask that you contact us if any works are in the vicinity of the CLH-PS pipeline or alternatively go to www.linesearchbeforeudig.co.uk, our free online enquiry service. Bristol Port Bristol Port Company Company We were interested to receive a message from NSC Consultations about the proposed new local plan, which provided a link to the pre-commencement document. We were pleased to see that the document includes a reference to the Port and suggest that its scope should also cover: • the role the Port already plays as a nationally significant infrastructure asset; • applicable national planning policy for ports; and • the creation of freeports, which are likely to include the Port. We look forward to contributing to the formal plan process when it gets underway Page 6 of 328 6 May 2020 11:23:23 Respondent Respondent Agent Name Comment Attached documents Name Organisation Backwell Backwell Parish Council Parish Council We are pleased North Somerset Council (NSC) have published the above decision and discussion document and are undertaking a ‘soft’ consultation inviting comments on whether the scope and timetable are appropriate and whether the document covers all elements related to Local Plan production.