Brizen Farm Appeal

December 16, 2009. I've just had an official letter telling me that the potential developers of 350 houses at Brizen Farm have appealed against non-determination by Tewkesbury, so the matter will now go to Public Planning Inquiry! Tewkesbury had, very sensibly in my view, told the developers, Newbridge Construction, that - given that the Inspector to the SD2 (Farm Lane) inquiry had said that application was premature - they ought to wait until the final RSS was published. But Newbridge have appealed anyway.
Does this mean that Newbridge think there never will be a final RSS, and are hoping that they can take advantage of a potential absence of overall planning framework if the Tories win the General Election? Who knows - but I hope that this cheeky application means they get landed with all the costs being awarded against them.! They must realise that this is a risk - but the potential for making money is so large they don't care. It shows what we are up against in fighting these big development companies!

Kit Braunholtz

County Council refuses to sell land

The big news today is that the ruling Conservative group on the County Council have pledged not to sell County Council land at Northwest Cheltenham to the prospective deevelopers, Bloor and Persimmon who want to build 4,500 homes there.  As the County Council owns a lot of the land there , this may block the proposed development, though the developers may still apply to build on land they own.

This story raises the question as whether an application to build in the Leckhampton#Shurdington area could be similarly blocked.  The County Council owns some land in  the Cheltenham part of the Leckhampton White Land, but probably not enough to stop development there.  A larger parcel of land belongs to the Church, and if they refused to sell it would certainly block development on the Cheltenham White Land, where Bovis would like to build.

The LEGLAG committee celebrates 16 successful years!

December 1st, 2009.   The LEGLAG committee met today to discuss our responses to the Joint Core Strategy consultation paper "Issues and Key Questions" about their approach to planning for the Cheltenham/Gloucester/Tewkesbury area.  

We had a very useful discussion - heated at times - about what we should say and ask others to say.  We are a very opinionated and stroppy lot, and the chairman (me) had a hard time keeping order!  But we need independently minded people on the Committee, and we all work hard and have done a lot this year at a very uncertain time for the future of planning in our area.

We finished our meeting very enjoyably, still good friends, and celebrated sixteen successful years since our beginnings in  1993 with mince pies and a bottle of bubbly!  We meet again in the New Year on January 12.