A two-pronged attack has been made against a proposed 300-home site on the outskirts of Hereford, on the eve of a High Court hearing to decide if the development should remain in the blueprint for future building.
Lib Dem leader Councillor Terry James and constituency Labour Party secretary Bob Clay have each issued strongly-worded statements against Herefordshire Council’s support for a Bloor Homes application to build at Bullinghope, near the recently-completed Rotherwas access road, off the main A49 Hereford-Ross-on-Wye trunk road.
“The Bullinghope proposal is ill thought out, environmentally damaging and will cause enormous traffic problems. The council needs to get real and stop living in a fantasy world – this is Herefordshire, not Disneyland”, said Councillor James.
Council plans to build 17,000 houses in the county “hit the buffers” when a housing slump meant a drop in the number to be built, and the Bullinghope site was probably the most unsuitable in South Wye.
Council leader Roger Phillips included the site in the blueprint Unitary Development Plan (UDP) with less than half an hour to go before its deadline, and without any public consultation, Councillor James said, adding that the site itself lacked access, flooded, would be difficult to connect to services and could contain historic and archaeological interest. And the site would contain no affordable housing, while making no contribution to the Rotherwas relief road.
His views are supported by Councillor Clay, who takes Council chief executive Chris Bull to task for ignoring an email sent on June 9, in which he suggested the chief executive should should “give very serious consideration” as to whether the Council should continue to defend the (High Court) action by the Dinedor Hill Action Association against the Bullinghope development.
He claims that the late decision to include the site in the UDP was political, supported by a number of councillors because they were told that it would lead to Bloor Homes making a financial contribution to the construction of the Rotherwas Access Road.
“However, answers given at the last full council meeting on May 16 have confirmed what was increasingly obvious – the Access Road has been completed without a contribution from Bloor Homes,” he said.
There was now an extremely powerful and simple political argument that the decision to include Bullinghope in the UDP, the council’s statements at the Public Inquiry and its decision to reject the inquiry inspector’s decision were all based on a false prospectus, he said.
If any elected councillor raised the issue, council pre-determination rules meant they would risk losing the ability to speak and vote at a later stage, he wrote.
“You will not be surprised if opponents of the Bloor application raise major and persistent concerns about pre-determination and prejudice among the supporters of the application”, he told the chief executive.
“It is difficult to see how planning officers could possibly recommend acceptance of this application without raising serious and distasteful speculation as to their independence from inappropriate political influence.”
Council head of planning and transportation Andrew Ashcroft said: “There is a strategic housing requirement in the Regional Spatial Strategy for Herefordshire to provide 16,600 dwellings in the next 12 years. It is currently proposed that half of these new dwellings will be in Hereford.
“It is clear that the house building industry is facing challenging times but it is important that the county continues to plan for this level of growth in the longer term.
The need for new dwellings (based around household formation rates) remains as identified in regional and local planning documents.
“Herefordshire Council remains fully committed to its identification as a ‘new growth point’, and the application by Bloor Homes to build 300 homes within the Hereford City settlement boundary could contribute towards much needed improvements to community infrastructure.
“The council is defending a legal challenge to the allocation of the site in the UDP in the High Court on June 26-27 and so it would be inappropriate for me to comment further at this stage”.
Bloor Homes said it would not be appropriate to comment in the light of the pending court case.
lThe Journal Says – Page 4
