I am responding to the letter received from you, dated 8/12/16, concerning the above - in particular the Sharmans Cross Road site. I see from the map of the proposed allocation that this includes the Solihull Arden Club and grounds as well as the old rugby club grounds and my response is relating to that. I did try to reply through the on-line portal but I confess that I was completely unable to work out how to view or make any comments.

I have 3 main objections to building on this site - road infrastructure, school places and sports facilities.

Road Infrastructure
The present roads are unable to cope with the volume of traffic at certain times of the day, especially at school starting and finishing times. To add another 100 houses could potentially mean another 200 cars trying to access the road system which the present infrastructure would be unable to sustain.

School Places
As I understand it the existing schools, both primary and secondary, are oversubscribed. As it appears that the proposed houses will include a substantial proportion of affordable housing and starter homes that would appear to suggest that many families would be acquiring the houses with the result of a considerable increase in the demand for school places which will be difficult to meet.

Sports Facilities
Rugby pitches - It is a great shame that, since Birmingham and Solihull Rugby Club ceased using the rugby pitches, no other sporting club has been able to agree a reasonable rent with the current owners of the land to enable the pitches to be used. I know that Silhill Football Club was very interested in playing on those pitches but the rent demanded by the current owners (who I understand are Oakmore) was prohibitive. It is interesting that the first comment under "Likely infrastructure requirements" is "Re-provision of sports pitches if not in surplus". I have my suspicions that the current owners of the land deliberately set the rate at an exorbitant level to ensure that no club could afford to play there and so they could say that the pitches were unused for many years and therefore in surplus. At a time when the importance of getting people to exercise more is so widely recognised surely we could use these pitches for some form of sporting facilities which would be far less costly than a re-provision of sports facilities elsewhere. Also, I understand that following the last appeal against the proposed development of this site, Sport England designated the land for use solely for sporting purposes. Surely this must be considered and acted on?

Solihull Arden Club - I am very surprised that this club and grounds are included in the map of the proposed allocation. I can only say that the club is widely used as both a sports club and a social club and the cost of compensating the members for moving to another facility - should one be found - would presumably be huge and I can't understand why this would even be considered.

I look forward to hearing the outcome of the consultation period in due course.