Following the previous successful campaign against development on Baxters Fields, Green councillors on Stroud District Council have been working hard to get new plans for up to 80 houses, on green fields near Stratford Park, rejected.
The application for a housing estate and flats on Grange Fields, on the corner by the roundabout at the Tesco Supermarket end of Stratford Road, is in the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and is an important area for bats. A decision on the planning application should be made by the SDC planning committee in July.
Objections being registered by Green Party councillors are as follows:
- The site sits within the Cotswolds AONB; and major development should only be permitted in the AONB when no alternative sites for housing development are available locally. Stroud District Council’s emerging Local Plan allocates alternative sites around Stroud, those being brownfield sites which should be prioritised for development.
- Allowing the application would risk setting a precedent for further development into the AONB and on other greenfield sites, both in the adjoining Painswick Valley and other such sensitive areas around the town. To permit the Grange Fields development could make it difficult to defend, at appeal, refusals for other such greenfield sites.
- The site has considerable landscape value as a finger of AONB land running into the town and creating a very attractive green gateway on a major entry route into Stroud. The proposed block of flats close to the road would be particularly intrusive in this landscape as seen from the entry road to the town and adjoining areas.
- The roundabout junction proposed as the road access point is very congested at peak traffic times and an additional access road onto this junction would increase that congestion and could prove dangerous during rush hours.
- Ecological surveys for bats on the site have been insufficient. Trees on the site have been identified by the developer’s surveys as having considerable bat roost potential, yet no emergence and re-entry surveys have been carried out to discover whether those trees do house bat roosts.
- The site has also been identified in the developer’s surveys as being a foraging ground for bats, including at least one especially rare species. One of the reasons for a recent refusal of permission for development on a similar greenfield site in Nailsworth was concern over the site being a bat foraging ground and the possible adverse effect on foraging bats. This site deserves a similar level of concern on that count.
While our Green councillors accept the general need for further housing development in our area, we feel this proposal is completely inappropriate and will support the growing local campaign against it.