Object

Representation ID: 13492

Received: 27/09/2021

Respondent: Annie Ingram

I object to the proposal to build approximately 560 houses on the site of the former Brandhall Golf Course in Sandwell.

The Sandwell Black Country Draft Policies Map shows this site allocated for housing, with no identification of any green space, in spite of the Council stating that a (wholly inadequate) area would be designated as public open space. The Map shows no Local Greenspace sites anywhere in the wards affected.

The decision to close the golf course and allocate for housing was taken in May 2020, in the height of the Covid 19 pandemic in the UK, and takes no account of the benefits to local residents during and after lockdown once golf was no longer played and the site was available be used freely. Nor does it properly consider the effects on the flora and fauna living there.

I do not think I need to set out any of the huge body of evidence showing the importance of green spaces for people's physical and mental health, and their importance for wildlife and the environment. For people, this is referred to in the Health and Wellbeing Chapter, as part of 5.7 - 5.13 and Draft Policy HW1.

Open Space, Sport and Recreation is specifically referrred to in Draft Policy ENV8. This states that development that would reduce the overall value of the open space, sport and recreation network in the Black Country will be resisted. The current proposals singularly fail to comply with this.

It is difficult to see how they would comply with Draft Policy ENV4, given the number of mature trees on the site. It is also unclear how chopping down the number of trees needed to allow this development will enable it to comply with the air quality requirements of Draft Policy CC4.3

In addition, the site appears to be a Core Habitat Zone, part of the Nature Recovery network referred to in Draft Policy ENV3 and Appendix 6, where there is a priority for protection and restoration. The proposals will seriously damage the high ecological value of the site.

Draft Policy HW2 requires the protection of existing primary and secondary healthcare infrastructure and services. The existing local Medical Centre will certainly not be able to cope with the needs of the occupants of an additional 560 houses. The Council's only response on this seems to be to let the NHS sort it out.

The site is a flood storage area for a housing development adjacent, and is subject to flooding itself. It is unclear what effect developing this site for so many houses will have. It is hard to see how it can comply with Draft Policy CC5.

This proposal is laughably named Brandhall Urban Village, but in reality, it comprises housing, the relocation of an existing school, and the bizarre concept of the 'creation' of a public open space on an area of public open space! (The idea that a former golf course owned by council tax payers and in the care of the Council, is not considered public open space is truly disingenuous. )

I do not question the need for housing, but this is a built up residential area, and my ward of Old Warley already has a paucity of open space (0.86 hectares against the borough average of 3.63 hectares.)

It also needs to be borne in mind that green open space at Londonderry Playing Fields, some two miles away, has recently been lost to the new Aquatics Centre. I do not intend to rehash the arguments about that, but it is a matter of fact that that green open space has now gone for good. Sandwell simply does not have enough open green space to lose any more.

West Midlands Mayor Andy Street has said "It is hard to accept that we could be losing a significant amount of green belt for housing despite so much brownfield land still existing across the Black Country". This applies to all our green open space. Undeveloped sites such as Brandhall Golf Course represent easy wins for developers, and indeed for Councils, but we need to take on the challenges of redeveloping brownfield sites if we are to have any quality of life in the Black Country.