Following demands from CPRE Bedfordshire at the Public Examination of their Local Plan currently underway in Bedford, BBC have released the latest update of their Forward Housing Trajectory for the full Local Plan period to 2030.
This shows, as CPRE Bedfordshire has long predicted, that BBC has a massive surplus (or contingency) of over 1,000 houses in their Local Plan. (See page 3 of attachment below).
This surplus is equivalent to a village the size of Sharnbrook or Oakley and is quite unacceptable.
To put this into perspective, the entire Local Plan allocation of new homes to the Key Service Villages of Sharnbrook, Great Barford, Bromham and Clapham is 2,000 new homes (500 homes per village).
A spokesperson from CPRE Bedfordshire said:
“It is recognised that our country is facing the catastrophe of massive biodiversity loss due in part, to overdevelopment – the concreting over of our countryside.
For BBC to hold a contingency of 1,000 homes is quite unacceptable.
The allocation of new homes to the Key Service Villages will be built entirely on Greenfield sites in open countryside.
We are calling on The Mayor to use this contingency to substantially reduce the number of new homes allocated to the Key Service Villages so that development is more sustainable.
For example, the 500 new homes that both Sharnbrook and Great Barford are required to take under the new Local Plan proposals represents a +50% increase in the size of each of these villages – this is totally unsustainable and will result in massive environmental degradation!
The Mayor says that his priority is to reverse Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss – let’s see if his actions match his words. Or is he more interested in supporting the vested interests of land owners and property developers?”
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