Small Cotswold village 'will be ruined' by 1,090 new homes
Summary
There are fears plans to build almost 19,000 homes in the Cotswolds over the next two decades “will ruin” communities including a small village near Cirencester. Cotswold District Council has been tasked by the Government to come up with a plan for housing development in the district.
Details
And council leaders are in the process of considering a new local plan to meet this aim and provide a blueprint for housing, employment and leisure sites until 2043. Planners are proposing the creation of ten strategic sites which will take 90 per cent of the new housing.
But residents in small villages such as Driffield, where 1,090 could be built, fear the local plan is “crazy” and will “ruin everything about the community”. At a cabinet meeting on August 6, Liberal Democrat council leader Mike Evemy (Siddington and Cerney Rural) acknowledged the “anxiety and concern” caused by the draft local plan.
“I recognise that for some of our communities that may have been surprising what was in there,” Cllr Evemy said. He explained the council is “facing a Government that has imposed a housing target” upon it. “When the new government was elected two years ago they talked about building 1.5 million homes in five years.
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That’s 300,000 a year,” Cllr Evemy said. “As a consequence of that the figure they expect to be delivered from the Cotswold district more than doubled to over 1,000 a year from less than 500.” He said as a result the council’s policies are deemed out of date and there is a tilted balance in favour of development.
“Essentially that is speculative development aside from those developments that tare on our already allocated sites,” he added. He went on to say that he has written to three different ministers and each of the three occasions they made clear they would not change the target.
“The Government has been steadfast and they have not budged on the target.” Neil White, from Driffield Parish Council, was among several public speakers who spoke at the cabinet meeting and said the proposals are going to “ruin” the small village which currently has around 40 houses. “People who have been there for years love it,” he said. “This is going to ruin it.
“It’s just crazy. It’s ruining a community and everything about it in every single sense.” Cllr Evemy said he understands why people are anxious over the plan. “There are communities like yours in other parts of the district as well that are feeling similarly anxious and very concerned,” he said.
Report source: Gloucestershire Live