LDP - Proposed Housing Allocation 18

I would like to raise my concerns / objection to the inclusion of the Sharmans Cross Road housing allocation as part of the LDP.

I recently moved to Solihull from Hodge Hill - B36 8JQ - upon the birth of my son who is now almost 4 years old and will be starting reception very soon. I purchased a house on Sharmans Cross Road because the housing density is far less than around Hodge Hill where overextension was becoming endemic and I felt it was no longer a suitable place to raise a small child. Two particular concerns were the overextension of properties so that the people density was double what it had been when I grew up there; and the removal of gardens and green spaces to make way for additional car spaces which in turn raised the volume of cars, which in turn made driving conditions atrocious.

I am therefore very concerned that after having made Solihull our home to avoid these issues we might face the exact same issue once more. Let me explain.

Issue 1. The major traffic congestion.

At present my daily routing involves leaving the house at 8.20 with my wife and son in the car. Often the traffic jam from the direction of Solihull town centre goes past my house - I would say twice a week. I need to wait to be let out, then I drive down towards Solihull station, drop my wife off, and drive to Blossomfield School to drop off my son. I then drive back home to work (I have a home office). The round journey takes from 8.20 to around 9.10 each morning to cover a round trip of about 2 miles.

Sharmans Cross Rd is a traffic jam going towards the station, but returning and driving towards Blossomfield there is then a serious lack of any parking so 3 lanes f traffic build up. This is already incredibly dangerous and I have had several near misses with large cars that drive into oncoming traffic in order to obtain a space. Once at Blossomfield there are no spaces at all and after drop-off much of the traffic from the school turns onto Solihull Rd and then down to Sharmans Cross Rd.

In short I would estimate that between 7.30 and 9.00 in the morning and again at around 3.15 to 4pm in the afternoon the road is effectively locked up as a thoroughfare and again from 5.30 to 6.30pm particularly towards Solihull Rd.

The traffic gets worse when there are sports fixtures as the cars have to park on the south side of Sharmans Cross Rd but if there were houses built on the proposed site this would actually be one of the main places for local parking and I suspect Sharmans Cross Rd would in effect become a no-go zone for traffic, with drivers needing to divert because of gridlock.

2. Noise pollution

An aspect of living on Sharmans Cross Road has been that there is far more road noise than I anticipated. I am writing this at 5pm on a Tuesday night and the constant stream of traffic is far worse than I had realised when I bought the property. I had to move my son from a front to a back room to prevent him being woken up particularly in the mornings by the constant sound of cars. Even when there is not gridlock on the road it's clear that Sharmans Cross Rd is already very much at capacity for traffic making its' way from Shirley into Solihull town centre and back.

3. School environment

For me one of the main reason to move to Solihull is the choice of schools. Solihull is an investment - it is not a cheap place to buy a property in and to do so I planned to move to an area where I knew my son would have the best prospects as he grew and made his life in the town. My concern is that the already greatly oversubscribed schools will be combined with the fact that the schools clearly do not have sufficient land to build extensions to deal with the number of subscribing children (e.g. Blossomfield's current extension which is already stretching the physical capacity and land use of that school to the maximum). The increase in the numbers of subscribers mean either the children will have to travel further afield - making traffic even worse - or they will be allocated a place but in an area where traffic will make the schools themselves less desirable or even inaccessible, or finally the schools themselves will have to be developed to increase capacity - meaning in turn overdeveloped facilities with even less land for the children.

4. Crime and anti-social behaviour

One major issue with living on Sharmans Cross Rd and I can only assume this will deteriorate with high density housing is the crime. In the 18 months since living here we have had 4 nearby houses have bricks thrown through the windows of cars parked on driveways. We have had break-is at the back of houses with the police telling us it is criminals trying to find car keys to steal vehicles of driveways. Only a week ago I interrupted the attempted theft of my neighbours' car (48 Sharmans Cross Rd) from his driveway at 1am. My neighbour-but-one (# 42) had a major break-in 2 months ago. And finally there are some teenagers over the road who sit on the base of the oak tree and drink vodka and southern comfort out of sight of their parents. I know they do because my 3 year old came close to picking up one of the bottles they had left behind smashed on the pavement.

It is of course very likely that having a higher density of target properties is only going to increase the high level of property and car crime that the area currently suffers from.

5. Character

It may be less tangible but there is a reason why Solihull is seen as desirable and aspirational. I certainly always wanted to live here and I have been very happy. I hope the area continues to be a place that people can aspire to. But I do think that this development will rob a great deal of the essential character of the area in the exact same way that Hodge Hill did over the past 30 years. I saw Hodge Hill change from a desirable place to a place that people wanted to get away from. I hope that doesn't happen here.