Dear Residents
The Parish council wish to bring this potentially serious planning application to your attention.
Croudace Homes have formally applied to build 360 homes over the next few years on a site in Great Ashby adjoining the Stevenage/Weston road.
It is the Parish Council’s view that this will very significantly affect the traffic through the village as the existing road will be routed through the estate making it very easy for the new homes, two cars or more per home perhaps, to get to the A1M at junction 9 or to the A505 for Cambridge, Stanstead and Luton.
In addition to this estate traffic the new road layout will make it very easy for residents in the northern part of Stevenage and Great Ashby to access the Weston Road through Haybluff Drive and Calder Way to get to the A1M and A505. The hideous traffic calming bumps in Calder way must deter people at present but it is planned for these to be removed in the longer term. The build phase of this site will be counted in years so Weston faces years of heavy construction traffic using the village.
The traffic assessments made by the developer are based on traffic counts at various junctions in 2015. These simply measured what happened at a moment in time and make no attempt to account for changing traffic patterns resulting in the ‘improved’ road layouts.
The Council will continue to oppose to this development citing the following reasons for our objection:
- That this application is inappropriate at the present time as the NHDC Local Plan has not been authenticated by the Planning Inspector and that if this is accepted at this time it could prejudice the impartial adjudication process by the Planning Inspectorate. Weston contend that this is an inappropriate location for Stevenage/Great Ashby expansion as it is so remote from the town’s facilities, transport links, retail outlets etc. How could the inspector agree it is inappropriate development if planning permission has already been given?
- That this development is not ‘essential development’ and it therefore should not be a reason to build on the Green Belt. It is the Weston PC’s view that the affordable housing will satisfy the need for Stevenage rather that North Herts communities.
- That application states that this site will provide no new schools but that the children from these households will have to be allocated to existing schools. However the NHDC Local Plan states that the existing Stevenage and Great Ashby schools are already full and there is an urgent need to build one primary and one secondary school in the area. It has been confirmed that a large secondary school is planned which will create additional traffic on the Weston/Stevenage Road.
- This development will create a totally unacceptable level of increased traffic through Weston with the resulting noise, dirt and increased accident risk. The road to Stevenage is a very small rural road not built for this level of traffic. It is also wholly unsuited to use by construction traffic.
- The new road layout will attract ‘rat running’ from the wider area of north Stevenage and Great Ashby.
This application, if agreed, will make a further plan for for 600 homes around Tile Kiln farm very difficult to oppose and it is the view of your Parish Council that development on this scale creates a very serious threat to Weston.
Details of this application can be seen on the NHDC Planning website, application number 16/01713/1 or by clicking here. We strongly encourage all residents to comment directly to NHDC. This must be done before 25th August 2017.
Thank You
Tim Moody
Chairman, Weston Parish Council
Welcome to Weston 