Two more applications have been submitted within the Keresley SUE area. Please object to the application for 444 homes off Penny Park Lane and Watery Lane, the consultation expires 23 May 2020. Currently it is shown as being delegated to the officer for decision. If the usual rules apply, it will go to committee if 5 or more people object. We will be developing detailed arguments, but meanwhile, all the usual points apply:
- It is unsustainable to use former green belt land when the expected population hyper explosion has not occurred in Coventry. Our best estimate of the 2018 population is around 335,000 (based on a dwelling based estimate of the population). ONS midyear estimates of 366,000 for 2018 are indefensible when there has been no upturn at all in school admissions, pensions claimed, jobs created, house building, domestic gas and electric usage, voters on the electoral role, domestic waste produced, or births. All real time growth indicators show Coventry is growing at the average rate for the region, around 7% for 10 years, not 16%.
- As at the last published brownfield register Coventry had abundant brownfield land with planning permission, 153 ha.
- Highways England has voiced serious and continuing concerns about the effect of the totality of the SUE (the 3100) on the strategic road network, especially J3 M6 which already is known in their words to be “severely congested”.
- There is a chance that the Keresley link road will never be built which would have the effect of dumping more traffic, coming from Birmingham and the west, headed for the M6, into our local streets.
- It will damage a historic landscape. Coventry Council, in their own 1995 Arden Design Guidance, which is still in effect, identified Keresley as the best remaining piece of the Ancient Arden landscape in Warwickshire.
- It will damage significant archaeology. Ground penetrating radar shows a pre Saxon barrow off penny park lane.
- It will damage biodiversity. The UK Govt has signed an international treaty, The Aitchi Convention, promising to restore losses in Biodiversity by 2020. According to Natural England, we have lost 70% of our specialist farmland birds and 70% of butterflies in the last 40 year. The Lawton Report, Making Space for Nature, put us in the last chance saloon for keeping our wildlife. We are in a desperate situation, where we are in grave danger of losing many plant and animal species.
- The land is much used for recreation and walking – it will adversely impact public health.
- North Warwickshire has expressed strong concerns that major development in Keresley will turn narrow country lanes into dangerous rat runs.
- It increases the risks of flooding.
- There is no prospect of modal shift from cars to buses, bikes & walking – because there are no suitable cycling and walking routes into town from the area. Modal shift has been extremely hard to achieve around the country.
- The hospital and local NHS surgeries & services are at capacity already.
- There is no assurance that the promised school will be built. 10 years on, there is still no school built at Banner Brook.
- Air Quality – a massive development of this size will greatly adversely affect air quality, which is already in breach of the EU Air Quality Directive. 168 people/year die prematurely in Coventry due to bad air, ten times as many as die in road crashes in the same time.
Please find attached the latest summary on population and a map of traffic black spots with objections from the statutory agencies.
To lodge comments please click on the links below which will take you to the planning applications, then just scroll down slightly to the yellow “Comment on this Application”. Please add your own thoughts and concerns as well. Please do respond even if only briefly, we need this one to go to committee.
2020/0748
http://planning.coventry.gov.uk/portal/servlets/ApplicationSearchServlet?PKID=808187
Land at Bennetts Road Coventry West Midlands Coventry
Full planning application for a residential development of 444 dwellings (C3), public open space, landscaping, drainage attenuation areas, access from Bennetts Road and Penny Park Lane, access roads, land safeguarded for a new Link Road, and other associated works. This application is accompanied by an Environmental Statement.
2020/0764
http://planning.coventry.gov.uk/portal/servlets/ApplicationSearchServlet?PKID=808212
Colliery Sports Club Bennetts Road Coventry
Demolition of existing structures to facilitate residential development with associated access, parking, landscaping and drainage plus replacement car park and sports pitch for sports club