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More Frightening Development Proposals Revealed for Castle Donington

On November 12th 2008 those Councillors who attended Castle Donington Parish Council's Planning Meeting were handed a 70 page document prepared by the planners within NWLDC outlining their proposed intentions for development up to 2026.

As you will appreciate 70 pages is quite a read and although the language is stodgy the content is scary, not least because with little publicity they expect the people of NW Leicestershire to read it and feedback on it. Despite the task ahead I urge as many people as possible to give it a go, see  http://ldf.nwleics.gov.uk/  . If you register you are intermittently asked questions as to whether you agree to the proposals.

Whilst we at the Parish Council are busy fighting the nonsense development North of Park Lane, particularly the access to it; if it must happen then access to the majority of the development has to be by a new road built from Back Lane, not Bentley Road or Park Lane. Sometimes it is clear that planners act from such ignorance, such as the hair-brained scheme that will see the bus station remodelled to allow only two buses at a time to use it, when every day with school buses there are usually 4 and sometimes 5 in there at the same time.

Now the District Council is foisting another catalogue of horrors with this Local Development Plan, also known as the Core Strategy For Growth and Change. Fortunately the initial period to raise concerns was only up to 22^nd December, at least this has now been extended to 13^th February.

So what horrors lie beneath?

Well firstly in 6.4, page 5 you see this lovely diagram described as the "Sustainability Triangle". This conveniently reflects the geography of NW Leics; bottom right or South East is Coalville where the majority of the 12,000 new houses will be built, South West in the New Forest is where the Environmental focus will be, leaving the top point or North around Castle Donington and Kegworth who will have to lump the industrial development. This despite, I might add, the document saying that there is little need for employment development around Castle Donington. The future plan is for people to walk or use public transport to get to work, but despite building the houses in Coalville which allows them to significantly invest in upgrading Coalville town centre the proposal is for industrial and warehouse development to be in the furthest reaches North.

Uppermost of concern is the proposed and preferred idea that they use 110 hectares of land at the side of junction 24 for a new Distribution Centre! That's about 300 acres. No matter that we already have had one forced upon us against our will at the old power station site; a distribution centre that is way under capacity as yet but when full will see an HGV lorry every 30 seconds trundle along Broad Rushes, 24 hours a day. Apparently Donington needs another one at the side of junction 24 and the airport bringing yet more traffic to the busiest motorway junction in the country. Oh and they also want a rail link! No doubt as many residents are kept awake at night by the ridiculous number of noisy flights out of East Midlands Airport, regular additional trains will be neither here nor there! Absolutely incredible! The local landowner may want to sell his land at a huge profit and the Highways Department probably likes this development as it adds a major contributor to their plans to turn junction 24 into another spaghetti junction. Forget the locals, forget the fact that the junction can't sustain it, forget the fact that it is on a slope and will no doubt flood Kegworth or the M1, forget the engineering works needed to raise any trains from the west side of the M1 to the east. It's all an unnecessary nonsense of an idea but it's their preferred option!

By the way it is the East Midlands that apparently needs another distribution centre not Castle Donington. As one Parish Councillor pointed out, there's the brown field site of Stanton Ironworks which already exists and is crying out to be developed. Plus it is practically next door to the largest railway sidings in the country....wouldn't that be a better site? In a semi-serious moment I also added that if Coalville is to get all the new houses, so they can redevelop the town centre then wouldn't that be a better site for the (largely) unskilled workers a new distribution centre needs?

Now while you're busy being distracted by that you'll no doubt almost miss the proposed housing development ideas. Coalville has been identified as the primary site for the 12,000 new houses apparently needed. There are several options which see Castle Donington allocated between 350 and 1,200 new houses! The preferred option here sees CD get 500 new houses, presumably the 275 North of Park Lane and another 122 on land to the rear of Upton Close (which is flood land behind Available Car encroaching into Hemington) with the balance coming from development South of Park Lane, behind Paddock Close and up to the race track border. This proposal shows 700 new houses, many of which will move closer to the expanding "disturbed night sleep" area near the airport. By the way did you know that the huge Master Plan Document for the future of the airport talks about noise but concludes that things will only get worse. There are no targets for noise reduction, not even at night!

Then get this, NWLeics are required to provide 43 permanent, 20 transit sites for travellers and another 10 for show people. Ignoring the latter who generally have dignity for the local community. All told though that's 63 new sites for travellers, paid for out of tax payers money to provide places to live for a section of society that nearly never pays any taxes but frequently breaks many other laws too. So despite all the trouble Castle Donington continues to have with travellers NWLDC's preferred option is to build  travellers sites alongside any new developments. As another colleague said to the District Council Planning Officer, yes get them to build the traveller site first and populate that, then build the houses and see how they sell. Now I try not to be political but we know that travellers are very tribal, you can't mix families without wars. Somebody thinks that if we provide places for them to stay they'll behave and won't trash the land they're on or fly tip, indeed they justify paying for these camps for tax dodgers, with the money they think they'll save not clearing up after them. All I can say on this is that at best, at very best, this is well intentioned but ultimately misguided naivety. I'll leave you to decide what it might be at worst.

As chairman of the Parish Plan I asked Stefan Saunders, the NWLDC planner just how naive I had been in thinking that the Parish Plan, which represents the views of the community, would be taken on board and used as the basis of future development thinking for District Councils. His answer was that they were listening to Parish Plan groups and clearly if the Castle Donington residents wanted a Leisure Centre to be built then skimming from these developments was the best way of achieving that aim. So effectively it's our own fault, if you want a leisure centre then you have to accept any unreasonable development we choose to throw at you. Do you know I had to laugh to stop myself strangling him!

Please, I urge you to log onto the site and register your feelings, this is the "consultation period", if we allow the plan to get through then at a later date, just like the housing development North of Park Lane, the developers will argue that the land and proposals were all allocated under the core strategy document  back in 2008/9, so how can you argue against it now? Let's try our damndest to make sure it's not a fait-accompli ten years from now.

Thank you

The link once again is   http://ldf.nwleics.gov.uk/

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