Object

Representation ID: 5001

Received: 15/12/2022

Respondent: St Philips

Agent: Lichfields

Legally compliant? No

Sound? No

Duty to co-operate? No

The Council’s updated ‘Rural Services and Facilities Audit 2021’ [RSFA] identifies Wedges Mills as a Tier 5 settlement, and the PP therefore still does not propose any allocations within the settlement, or at all along the edge of Cannock. Indeed, the draft policy states that these “settlements are not intended to experience further housing or employment growth, owing to their poorer public transport links and lack of services and facilities relative to other settlements within the district.”
the Council will be aware, in St Philips’ previous representations to the PO St Philips expressed concerns regarding the Council’s omission of any growth on the edge of Cannock. Particularly because this approach had no regard to the role that Cannock’s ‘higher order’ services have for the residents of settlements along its boundary, such as Wedges Mills, and that Wedges Mills is sustainably located on the edge of Cannock, which utilises the variety of existing services, facilities, and employment opportunities in Cannock.
Despite now assessing sites within the West of Cannock (A5 Corridor) area of search within the SSTP, the SSTP concludes that having considered all reasonable alternative sites on the western edge of Cannock, no site is considered to perform so well as to change the Council’s preferred spatial housing strategy.
In this regard, St Philips disagrees with the Council’s conclusion. In particular, due to the fact that this has been informed by an assessment of St Philips’ site at Wolverhampton Road, Wedges Mills (Site ref: 529) which contains unjustified and incorrect assessments of the Site. Whilst the Site was assessed in a previous ‘Sustainability Appraisal (2021)’ and ‘Housing Site Selection Topic Paper (2021)’ [HSSTP] and discounted the site due to Green Belt and landscape harms.
However, St Philips’ previously submitted Vision Document clearly demonstrated that any impacts from the development could be appropriately and sensitively mitigated. Indeed, St Philips’ vision for the Site did not comprise the full area of the Site, but comprised only a limited area located adjacent to the current western built-up area of Wedges Mills and would be contained within the existing tree-lined field boundary.
For this and other reasons St Philips disagree with the Housing Site Selection Topic Paper 2021 and Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment November 2022.
St Philips, therefore, requests the Council to consider a modification to draft Policy DS5, which considers the issues raised within these representations. In particular, St Philips considers that the Council should allocate Land at Wolverhampton Road, Wedges Mills for residential development.