Object

Representation ID: 23556

Received: 11/10/2021

Respondent: Pelsall First Councillor Team

Number of people: 3

WAH238 Vicarage Road/Coronation Road
WAH240 Mob Lane, High Heath
WAH236 Land at Yorks Bridge

This form is submitted on behalf of Cllr Edward Lee, Cllr Rose Martin and I [Cllr Gary Perry]. In short the proposals for neighbourhood growth housing allocation across the aforementioned footprints is both nonsensical and inappropriate.

The consultation has fuelled an anger the likes we have not seen for sometime. Selection of this land in the Green belt, whilst beneficial to housing need allocation, will cause a level of harm that will never be rectified. Green belt land has environmental benefits and once it is lost it is lost for good. The proposed sites if approved and furthermore acted on will create urban sprawl, changing neighbourhood identity, pressurising local services and will require significant investment in infrastructure. Infrastutcture costs that will fall on the taxpayer and ill affordable as we recover economically from covid.

School places are already at capacity locally, GP access is diminished, changed and challenged, the surroudning road network is overloaded - Lichfield Road, Coronation Road, Mob Lane, Norton Road, Fordbrook Lane - all arterial routes experiencing traffic volume, speed and congestion - very much evidenced at peak times. Access to all sites would be difficult and would only excercabate the already disruptive effects described. The aforementioned sites and land volume acts as a natural flood plain. Again building on this land would create signifiant issues locally - some of the adjacent roads already experiencing problems with the flood risk real and heightened by loaclised events during storms.

Ecologically the effects are also significant - resulting in loss of habitats, loss of wildlife, forestry, and agriculture. Building on such land can affect our rarest species such as [Redacted-sensitive information] - whose habitats can and will be devastated by the noise and pollution from the extra traffic developments generate. The strategy needs switching - we dispute the figures used in the consultation re Brownfield and if all brownfield sites were realised would negate the need for the idle proposal where Green Belt is the convenient choice.