Object

Representation ID: 18554

Received: 10/10/2021

Respondent: Councillor Shaz Saleem

Following the release of the draft Black Country Plan I would like to strongly OBJECT to the inclusion of the following sites.

DUH 208 p371 - Holbeache


I object for the following reasons.

The Triangle and Holbeache are the only remaining large areas of green space in our ward and losing them would be devastating. If these sites were to be developed then I feel that it would set a precedent to South Staffordshire District Council to start releasing green belt on our border which would only increase the issues that most of my residents have been raising during this consultation.

These two sites are currently in the green belt and before green belt land is considered the council should be absolutely sure that they have utilised all of the available brownfield land in the borough. Schemes are available to developers to help in the cost of remediation of brownfield land and I am sure more can be done to locate and bring forward sites.
Having just been through a pandemic we have seen how this has expedited the decline of our high streets, the council should now be taking another look at our town centres which will include a large number of disused shops. These centres need to be re purposed to include a mix of entertainment, office space, shops and now a larger residential element. I don’t feel this plan give enough attention to this post covid era in town centres.

The Triangle and Holbeache are used extensively by local residents for exercise and at a time of rising mental health complaints taking away these sites would surely have a detrimental impact on peoples health both physical and mental.
We also have to think about the impact on nature if these two large sites were to be developed, habitats for wildlife would be destroyed and we would loose even more of our declining wildlife. Trees and hedgerows would be destroyed as would the growing of wild flowers which all add to the bio diversity that we so badly need to protect and encourage.

These sites have been listed as important for stopping urban sprawl.

We have no direct access to motorways or rail from Kingswinford. The road network in and around Kingswinford is already struggling with queue’s forming at busy times on all the major routes. If any road in the area is closed or has traffic control’s in place, this causes chaos, in fact when traffic lights were put on the A449 for roadworks it pretty much gridlocked Kingswinford and Wordsley, this show’s to me that we are at capacity and without major investment, which has not been shown, the situation will only get worse.
The NPPF advises that where it has been concluded that it is necessary to release Green Belt land for development, plans should give first consideration to land which has been previously developed and/or is well served by public transport.
We have very poor access to public transport and all but no cycle routes, so how can the previous statement be correct for these sites? People who lived in any houses built on these two sites would have to use a car to get to work or travel anywhere in the borough. Of course with increased traffic come increase pollution, the A491 has the highest air pollution zones in the borough and again adding more vehicles to our roads is only going to make this worse. Hansen rate this area as having the worst commuting score from homes to places of employment.

We already have two large development sites within Dudley Borough minutes away from The Triangle and Holbeache, these are Stallings Lane and Ketley Quarry which include approximately 1358 homes. No infrastructure works have been carried out in regards to these two sites and from what I was told in our scrutiny meeting none are planned. There are also new development sites in South Staffordshire around Wombourne and Himley which will also have an impact on our road network as people travel through the borough to shop, work and visit services etc.

We should only be releasing green belt land if all other options have been exhausted and I don’t believe they have. I and my residents also question the number of houses that are required based on population statistics from 2014? Why have we not got updated figures which include the impact of Covid and Brexit. We cannot loose our precious green belt based on out of date data, this needs to be urgently reviewed.

I appreciate this is a joint plan and the council is working with three other local authorities, Sandwell for example have a huge shortfall of homes and it looks like Dudley Council are including green belt land in Kingswinford North and Wall Heath to compensate for this shortfall. This is not fair on my residents and Dudley Council should fight this in the strongest possible way.

I understand that we need to build houses for future generations, as a father myself I worry how my children will afford a house of their own in the future, but building high value homes on our green belt will not help this issue at all.