Last week, the chairman of Edenfield Village Residents’ Association, Paul Bradburn, wrote a letter to the Free Press which helps to point out some of the flaws in the Taylor Wimpey Masterplan for Edenfield. For those of you who missed it “in print”, we’ve reproduced it here.
| Sir We write yet again about the long running saga, of over 5 years, of Rossendale Council’s plan to to remove 31 acres of land from the Green Belt in Edenfield for housebuilding. Edenfield has just under 1000 houses at present and it has taken several hundred years to reach this total, but with this development we are looking at increasing the size if the village by over 400 new houses over the coming 10-15 years, an increase of well over 40%. The residents of Edenfield have almost universally opposed this scheme from the very start but we have been ignored. However, “we are where we are” and the scheme was approved by the Council in December 2021, so we are now, with dread, looking at the implications for the village of the Plan’s implementation. For their part the developers have now submitted proposals called a Masterplan which the Council’s Plan calls for to provide a template for the whole of the 31 acre and four developers, however Taylor Wimpey the largest of these has submitted what purports to be a Masterplan but which mainly concerned their own site. Fortunately the Council told them to take it away and do better next time, and this they have done, returning it in the last few days. It still has in our opinion several deficiences but one of the most glaring issues is their proposals for “mitigating measures” to deal with increased traffic on Market St. caused by the new development. These include a number of almost cosmetic items but the most damaging for our residents is the drastic parking restrictions on Market St. This involves much of the on street parking on the west side of the street being replaced by double yellow lines and similar restrictions covering about a third of the east side. Where are these residents cars to go?? What about disabled people and those with mobility issues? Taylor Wimpey have included an area on their development for the parking of 13 cars (up from 10 on their previous offering) but this is clearly a long long way from being sufficient. These residents on Market St did not want this development but are being penalised through no fault of their own and we look to the Council to make things right. Of the other issues in this purported Masterplan are such things as Housing design (also a contentious issue) and drainage of the site where National Highways which is responsible for the by-pass has raised serious concerns about that particular issue. So whilst these are just proposals at this stage and are being considered by the Council this is very serious for our village. When the Council met to consider the Local Plan in December 2021 we asked that they defer consideration of this part of the scheme until the traffic issues for Edenfield had been resolved. We raised this matter because even the Government Planning Inspector who held the enquiry into it said that the traffic issues in Edenfield were only “potentially capable” of being solved, that means that they are also “potentially incapable ” of being solved, however the Council in its wisdom decided to approve the Plan. As these proposals stand it is our view that these proposals will damage our village and the lives of its residents and must not be adopted. Yours Paul Bradburn Edenfield Village Residents Association P.S. if you wish to look at the Masterplan you can find it on The Council’s website under “Edenfield Masterplan” and there is on page 47 a map of Market St but it is of such a scale that you may need a magnifying glass to read some of the detail. |
