Formal Response to Planning Application No: P/20/2107/2
Cllr Deborah Taylor: 17th December 2020
I would like to share my objections to this planning application as the Leicestershire County Councillor for this area.
In my view, I believe this development is unsustainable for the following reasons:
The nearest bus stop walking from the front of the site is 700m away on a steep hill. From the rear of the site the walking distance will be far greater and over the recommended walking distance to a bus stop making this site unsustainable and very reliant on car journeys. The Centrebus 154 service is an hourly service between Leicester and Loughborough. This service ends in the early evening so any residents not working ‘Monday – Friday; 9am-5pm’ will be fully reliant on the use of a car to get to employment. To Note: Leicestershire County Council (LCC) also subsidises this service. If these services are removed, this planning application will be left with no bus service. This would leave the ‘Monday – Friday; 9am-5pm’ workers reliant on car journeys to access employment. There is also the need to consider leisure and family time, equally as important for health and wellbeing. With a possibility of no available public transport, this will leave families reliant on car journeys to access leisure facilities. The walking distance from the front of the site to the primary school is 900m, from the rear of the site the distance will be greater, again on a steep slope. This is above the advised walk to school distance for primary aged school children and makes it very likely that children will be transported to school via car. There is also the long distance to other essential services, for example: the doctor’s surgery; the school bus pick-up point for secondary aged children; shops; the local village halls and facilities. Forest Road, Woodhouse Eaves has been selected as one of the sites for LCC’s average speed camera trials, due to the high numbers of accidents on the road and the high speeds of traffic in the area. To add more vehicles into this road network will only have a detrimental effect and as highlighted above, most journeys from the proposed site will be made by car. Taking all of the above reasons into account I think it is very clear that this site is not sustainable and the majority of journeys from the site will be taken by car. This will add huge pressure onto already very busy rural roads and will alter the rural village feel of Woodhouse Eaves. I also think that the proposed site will not provide the residents with a sense of community. As residents are likely to use their cars to access work and leisure facilities and are then more likely to look to facilities outside of the village, rather than walking the long distance to the village centre to access services there. The site falls within the catchment area of Woodhouse Eaves St Paul’s C of E Primary School. The School has a net capacity of 205. The current projections for the school next year are shown in figure 1. It is projected a shortfall in places. The school occupies a very constrained site and it will not be possible to accommodate further children at the school. Therefore, the additional pupils arising from the development would need to be accommodated at another school. The nearest being St. Bartholomew’s C of E Primary School, Quorn, or any successor educational facilities that would need to provide primary school accommodation to meet pupil growth from this development. This is unacceptable and provides further proof that this site is unsustainable and will be reliant on car journeys. It also provides further proof that this development will not form part of the community. The children from this site will not be making friends within the village as they will be attending a school away from the village. The pupils will need to be transported to the nearest school by public transport (the current Centrebus 154 service may change) or by mini-bus or taxi. Most likely they will be transported by parents and carers in cars. Thus, creating even more journeys from the site. No child from this site will be able to walk to school.
