Purton Neighbourhood Plan – time to comment

There is a lot of information about the draft Purton Neighbourhood Plan (download here) in the Purton Magazine, on the Parish Council website and at the various consultation events. I and Mike Bell wrote the Purton Planning for the Future (download here) which is the evidence base for the Plan. However, experts (kindly paid by you) were brought in by the Parish Council to help on the Plan itself. Mike and I were not involved.

So, there are two major messages.

  1. You will see that the Plan document itself is full of formatting issues, typos, poor grammar, factual errors and other trivial, yet mounting, errors which made reading and comprehension very difficult; and
  2. The prospect of a smaller development or a larger development.

Number 2 is complicated. What we have learned over the years is that smaller developments such as 50-60 houses bring no benefits to the village and only bring more cars, congestion, pressure on GP Surgery, dentist and schools, and so on. With the current situation at Wiltshire Council planning, almost any development will be approved. Even Widham Farm which has been around for years (and refused multiple times) is now not even being contested by Wiltshire Council at the current appeal at the end of the month (October 2024).

But surely a larger development (240+ houses) makes no sense either? Certainly it does not in the wrong place but there is something else.

What if that development has in its plan to build a road to the school, what if it gives the opportunity to provide for a large GP Surgery and Dentist in the one place; what if it provides for better flood control; what if it provides for meaningful open space for leisure and wildife in large ponds; what if… (for more information read Annex 8, page 93 in Purton Planning for the Future)

I agree it is not straightfoward and it is a risk. But going with a smaller development brings certainty of adding to traffic congestion, of flooding in some areas, of endless pressure on services.

It is a decision only you can make.

I will tell you what I am going to do:

(1) object to the Plan in its current form because it is unreadable

(2) support a larger development

Whatever you decide, do comment, anyway, here.

 

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