Housing Proposals for Balsall Common

I refer to your document for proposed housing in Balsall Common, plus the meetings organised in the village, where representatives from SMBC were present.

1. The overall presumption that the Green Belt must be sacrificed to the extent your plan assumes is contested. Gavin Barwell and now James Brokenshire have, in public broadcasts, stated that every option must be explored before Green Belt is removed.
The latest suggestion was that sites should be explored to create a completely new village/town.
Solihull have consistently refused to do this. As the Berkswell Parish Council have pointed out there is such a site on the old quarry near Cornet's End. This site comes into a different category because it is not brown field , and Solihull's argument always is that it must be restored to its original character before the quarry work was done. This is not acceptable, and would certainly be preferable to invading so much of the Green Belt surrounding Balsall Common. It is highly likely that developers would resist it, yet Andy Street has set aside large funds to allow this sort of project. The most crucial point in one of the above meetings was that developers MUST NOT be allowed to take precedence over every decision.

2. Your proposals for Balsall Common are far too highly weighted in one spot - Barretts Farm. The only other proposal for the other side of the village is Holly Lane. There is no cogent reason why you rejected building on the field next to Oakes Farm. This would be one field only, with good access to a main road. The additional advantage would be that the developer who is keen to build there could be made to create a full width road as access to Oakes farm shop and restaurant. With the popularity of the facilities there the current narrow road is totally unsuitable.

You also rejected any building near Grange Farm. Again, there would be good access to the A452.

3. The decision to place the vast majority of the housing on Barretts Farm would make the huge increase in traffic, and pollution, so lopsided in terms of the whole village that there would be a risk to health, at the very least, to mental health since you would be robbing this side of the village of all its footpaths. Footpaths round fields, with hedges, trees and ponds is very different for wildlife from a park.

4. The realistic situation is that some building may take place on Barretts Farm, but not to the extent proposed. Certain objectives should be required :-
a) the countryside, with footpaths and ponds, should be retained and the housing restricted to fields where there are no footpaths. In this way, the community will still be able to enjoy walking on the land.
b) if there is to be a new school, it should be given a playing field so that this facility can be used during school hours by the children, and out of school hours, by the community. There may also be space inside the school which could be for community use - this happened at a Birmingham school where I was a governor.
c) HS2 does not seem to be mentioned in your consultation document, but this is having, and will continue to have, a devastating affect on this side of the village. Therefore, no building on Barretts Farm should begin until this section of HS2 is completed.
d) the other stipulation should be that a new access road running parallel with the Greenway should also be completed before any development begins. It is essential that the narrow lanes of Meeting House Lane, Barretts Lane, Sunnyside Lane and Oxhayes Close keep their character by making all access to the development on Barretts Farm to and from the new access road.
e) the Council and developers should look at other estates in the village to copy the good features (footpaths through the houses, as on Kemps Green) and (curving paths, as on Grange Park), avoiding the completely straight path on Lavender Hall Park.
f) an earlier promise, which seems to have disappeared, was to create screening for the current surrounding houses. This was done by wooded areas on Lavender Hall, Berkswell Gate and Grange Park. This would not only make life more pleasant for the current owners, but would be more attractive for new house buyers.

5. We were told, at the meetings, that Balsall Common is highly desirable
because of its good infrastructure. I can only point out that the station carpark is so inadequate that cars use Hallmeadow Road, and now Station Road as overflow car parking. There are only two trains an hour; the bus service is very limited in times and destinations and the centre of the village is rapidly declining in variety of shops since all the banks closed. The parking in the village is so bad that almost every week there are small collisions between cars, made worse by the huge delivery lorries which obscure vision. Also, the vans which use the parking outside the shops and where the vehicle projects into the road are another hazard.

I apologise for the length of this response, but it is our lives at risk.