Object

Representation ID: 12517

Received: 04/10/2021

Respondent: Mr Ian Ralph

Comments on the Black Country Plan relating to Walsall, And Queslett Road East / Aldridge Road Development in Particular.

I object to such a large area of green belt land being used for housing when there are so many closed shops and unused buildings in and around the Walsall area.
Local infrastructure is already in place for these areas, and if new housing were spread around it would help to re-generate local communities and high streets. This re-generation is not best served by building large out of town blocks of new housing on green belt land. Once lost this valuable commodity can never be replaced. The Black Country Plan for Walsall states that the plan will identify new areas for new "infrastructure needs like transport, schools and GREEN SPACES, yet the plan does not identify any land for any new open spaces, just the destruction of 347ha of existing green space!

With reference to the proposed development on the Queslett Rd. East / Aldridge Rd. site, I would like to raise several points of objection.

1) The site is about as far away as it is possible to get from any existing or proposed employment areas shown on the map, thus increasing the need for many additional car journeys. Since the pandemic, use of public transport has declined significantly with no sign of it changing. Are you proposing each new house comes with a free electric car?

2) With the building of 960 houses, with an average of 2.4 children per house hold this will be an additional 2,304 children which could not be accommodated by existing schools, necessitating either more green belt land to be destroyed for new schools or many more car journeys. Surly smaller developments in an existing urban area would be ecologically more sustainable.

3) The area is situated in a valley, which means it will be visible from all of the surround area, thus the visual impact would be enormous.

4) According to the BBC news web site (www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46455844) 8% of the worlds Co2 emissions are generated from the production of concrete, and brick manufacture is one of Europe's largest emitters of green house gas (www.rolandberger.com/en/Insights/Publications/Climate-protection), so re using existing buildings or incorporating them into small new build would be far more environmentally sound. It would appear the Black Country Plan cares nothing about the global environment.

5) Of the 300ha green belt land designated for new development, 203ha falls in the Walsall area which does not seem a fair distribution of the degradation the area will suffer.