Object

Representation ID: 14647

Received: 14/12/2020

Respondent: IM Land - North of Main Road, Meriden

Agent: Stansgate Planning LLP

Legally compliant? Not specified

Sound? No

Duty to co-operate? Not specified

Comments on Draft topic paper on overall approach

There is no explanation why only rail and not bus is included as high frequency travel corridors in rural areas within Option A and no explanation why certain villages are categorized as limited or significant expansion within Options F and G.
Growth Option A – High Frequency Public Transport Corridors misses an opportunity as it refers solely to rail in the rural areas. Meriden has a high frequency bus service, as well as a local service, between Coventry and Birmingham. It is an express service with limited stops, it runs approximately every 20 minutes almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and there is a bus stop within 100m walking distance of the site proposed north of Main Road. The bus runs via the NEC and airport and will pass the HS2 interchange station presenting many employment opportunities. Meriden is a settlement that has a good level of services and facilities and is highly accessible. Growth Option F allows for the settlement to take proportionate growth and IM Land consider it is suitable and capable of accommodating a higher level of growth than the 100 houses proposed.
The Topic Paper concludes in respect of Meriden village, a medium to high accessibility rating and land to the east moderately performing in Green Belt terms but it is only included for limited expansion. The land promoted north of Main Road lies to the east so is not covered by mineral safeguarding constraint.
There is however no explanation in the Topic Paper or in the Topic Paper 4 of the previous consultation plan how the rural settlements have been split into two groups between Growth Options F and G as either for limited expansion or significant expansion of rural settlements.
It would appear that for significant expansion a settlement could be highly accessible or have a wider range of services including a secondary school, it does not have to have both. Dickens Heath for example is not as accessible as Meriden and has no secondary school. The Topic Paper provides a very similar assessment to that of Meriden but on capacity finds that Dickens Heath has capacity for significant growth. It gives no explanation how it reaches the conclusion. The accessibility study finds sites in Meriden to be highly accessible scoring higher than Dickens Heath. Meriden has a wide range of facilities and services. It is suggested that the settlement is constrained by lack of capacity at the primary school however no evidence has been out forward to comment on this. IM Land has therefore sought its own evidence and Turley have
prepared a report Education Assessment. This indicates that the primary school is already operating over capacity and neither the allocation of 100 houses in Policy ME1 or the land north of Main Road Meriden can be accommodated without school expansion. The level of demand for primary places generated by Policy ME1 West of Meriden (100 houses) and land north of Main Road (100 houses) together at 50 primary school places could be accommodated through expansion of the existing school. Meriden is capable of taking additional growth over and above that proposed and has site opportunities potentially more accessible and less constrained than other locations in the Borough.