Planning applications

On Wednesday, February 22nd, three planning applications for land adjacent to the reserve will be decided by Wiltshire Council’s Strategic Planning Committee. The meeting will be held in the Council Chamber at County Hall, Trowbridge, BA14 8JN and it will begin at 10.30am.

Application 18/10035/OUT is for site H2.4 on the map above, 20/09659/FUL is for site H2.5 and application 20/00379/OUT is for site H2.6.

We (FoSCP) have been fighting these applications since 2018 when the first of them, to build 55 houses on the Church Lane field (H2.4), just across the Lambrok from the reserve, was put forward. We believe firstly that the infrastructure required for almost 300 houses built in such proximity to the reserve will damage its biodiversity beyond repair and, secondly, that the extra footfall from such a massively increased local population will threaten its status as a Local Nature Reserve.

There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of objections to these three applications, not just from an outraged public but also from the experts. Ecologists, archaeologists, geologists, and road, transport and education departments all foresee problems that do not seem to have been properly addressed, if at all, in subsequent amendments to the proposed plans.

The meeting is public. There is limited room in the Council Chamber and only three speakers for the proposals and three against are permitted for each application so if you want to be there, or would like to speak, you need to contact Tara Hunt  (email: tara.hunt@wiltshire.gov.uk) as soon as possible because it looks like a first-come-first-served system. The meeting will be live streamed on Wiltshire Council’s website.

The rules say this: Members of the public will have had the opportunity to make representations on the planning applications and to contact and lobby their local member and any other members of the planning committee prior to the meeting. While the use of the future perfect tense is a little confusing, I am taking it to mean that I can still write to local councillors to lobby against these applications and that my representation will still be taken into account. If you should wish to do the same, here are links to a list of County Councillors with their contact details and the contact details for the members of the Strategic Planning Committee.

Over the last five years, I have published many articles about these planning applications, and below there are links to search results for each. Unfortunately the links contained within these posts to documents held by Wiltshire Council do not work, presumably because those documents have been moved or are no longer publicly available. I apologise for that: in the future I will download such reference documents and store them in the website’s media files.

Links to search results for previous posts about these applications:
20/00379/OUT
20/09659/FUL
18/10035/OUT

Header image: map showing all the H2 development sites planned for the southern edge of Trowbridge.