David Feather’s post yesterday highlighted the problems that planning application 20/00379/OUT will create for Lambrok Stream. The access road for the planned development will have to cross the stream and, no matter how many changes are made to the design of the bridge, we do not see how that can be done without damage to the Lambrok’s biodiversity.
Here are some relevant numbers:
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These are the flowers of Typha latifolia, the common bulrush, growing vigorously along Lambrok Stream.
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We can’t find nine ladies dancing. Come spring, we will have daffodils fluttering and dancing in the breeze, as per Wordsworth, but feel that the link is tenuous; we will also have ladies’ smocks flowering in the meadows but we used them up yesterday by calling them eight milkmaids.
Continue reading “On the ninth day”
Three well camouflaged roe deer in the Church Lane fields, photographed yesterday: a doe and her kids. Typically, a pair of roe kids is one of each sex, and here, the male is in the middle of the group; you can just see the buttons covering the pedicles, the places from which his antlers will grow.
Continue reading “Church Lane fields”
American mink have been in the news as a disease vector for COVID-19. Millions of animals on hundreds of Danish fur farms are to be destroyed.
Continue reading “Mink”
Wiltshire Council must not miss this opportunity to lead the way in developing a local Nature Recovery Network around Trowbridge.
Continue reading “A missed opportunity?”
Above is the Parameter Plan submitted by RPS with planning application 18/10035/OUT. If you look carefully, there are two grey dotted lines that run from the red site boundary, over the Lambrok Stream, and into the park. Right at the bottom of the key, they are labelled potential foot/cycle links and we assume that a foot/cycle link that crosses the Lambrok will do so on a bridge.
Continue reading “No bridges, please.”
We have been struggling to make sense of planning application 18/10035/OUT, RPS’s proposal to build 55 houses on the fields between the park and Church Lane, and therefore we have not yet submitted our response. This is the problem.
Continue reading “Planning Application 18/10035/OUT”
RPS has resubmitted Planning Application 18/10035/OUT to build houses on the fields between the park and Church Lane. The application was submitted on Wednesday, 2nd September, for a period of public consultation that will end on September 30th. The county’s policies for this site (H2.4) are on page 43 of Wiltshire’s Housing Site Allocation Plan.
The Environment Bill was submitted to Parliament in January, with the intention that it be enacted before the year is out; at the moment, it is somewhere in a post-lockdown legislative logjam while Parliament works out how to do its job safely in its famously loud and crowded chamber.
Continue reading “The Environment Bill 2020”
Roe deer photographed by Simon Handley on Saturday, in the field between Church Lane and Lambrok Stream. This is the site (H2.4) which developers, who are are proposing to build 65 houses there, have called: “. . .fields which were considered of low ecological value.”
The planning application reference number is 18/10035/OUT if you want to take a look at the details.
Follow this link for a Post about Planning Application 18/10035/OUT
by Barbara Johnson
A Neighbourhood Plan is able to put forward sites for future housing development. As part of Southwick’s Neighbourhood Planning process, we have to review sites in Southwick that have been included on Wiltshire Council’s Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment (SHELAA) map, plus any other sites that come forward. Collectively, it is known as a ‘Call for Sites’.
Continue reading “Impact of Housing Development on the Lambrok”
By David Feather
If anyone is wondering about the Wiltshire Housing Plan and its proposals for the area off Church Lane, it seems that you will have to keep on wondering for some time more. We have not forgotten about it and are watching “progress”. The wheels of bureaucracy grind on very slowly but hopefully this will be of advantage to those of us who love Southwick Country Park. We need to ensure that the planners get it right.
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The target date for Wiltshire Council’s planning department’s decision on RPS’s outline application (reference number 18/10035/OUT) to build 65 houses on the fields between Southwick Country Park and Church Lane (WHSAP site H2.4) has been moved yet again, this time to Monday December 2nd 2019.
Continue reading “A WHSAP update”
Inspector Stephen Lee, who oversaw April’s hearings into the Wiltshire Housing Site Allocation Plan, has submitted a preliminary report.
Continue reading “Inspector’s findings and advice”
The decision on RPS’s application to build 65 houses on the field south of Church Lane has been delayed again, until July 31st. We expect that this is, in part, to allow the Secretary of State’s Inspector, Stephen Lee, to make his decision and final report on Wiltshire’s Housing Site Allocation Plan.
Continue reading “The latest Church Lane update”
Wiltshire Housing Site Allocation Plan update.
Wiltshire’s Spatial Planning Department has said that Inspector Stephen Lee’s preliminary report on the WHSAP Examination, which was due on Thursday May 9th, is delayed but for only a matter of a few days. When it has been received, it will be published on the WHSAP webpage.
All our posts on this subject are tagged WHSAP.
The draft Trowbridge Bat Mitigation Strategy was published yesterday, February 21st. It contains information and proposals that will certainly be significant to both the WHSAP Examination and to RPS’s application to develop the Church Lane site.
Click here for the details
FoSCP’s Wednesday work party met half an hour early, in the car park, to discuss the latest developments in Wiltshire’s Housing Site Allocation Plan’s Examination.
Continue reading “WHSAP: the Friends plan the next move”
The decision on the planning application (18/10035/OUT) to develop the Church Lane site was due to be made yesterday, Wednesday Feb 6th, but has been delayed. The target date for a decision is now Monday April 1st.
Continue reading “Church Lane site update”
We, the Friends of Southwick Country Park, love animals. But we love animals in the right places and sadly, cats are not good for the Country Park. The picture shows a cat with a bird in its mouth but the range of creatures it can kill is wide. Cats can be really good predators. There is one report of a cat owner counting 10 prey brought home in one night.
Continue reading “Cats and Country Park don’t mix”
Water voles and their burrows are fully protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act but Natural England can grant developers a licence that permits disturbance. In fact disturbance is the very name of the game; the licence allows vegetation to be removed from up to 50 metres of bank in order to drive water voles from areas where development is planned.
Continue reading “New research on water voles”
We are posting the first part of our comment on RPS’s Preliminary Ecological Appraisal (PEA) of the Church Lane Site for two reasons: firstly the PEA seems particularly ill-informed about the park, the Lambrok and dismissive of their ecological importance; secondly, so that anybody who might like to comment before the public consultation ends on Dec 21st can use any of our data.
The deadline for comments on RPS’s planning application 18/10035/OUT has been extended from the 14th to the 21st of December. The application had not been properly advertised at the beginning of the consultation period.
FoSCP feels strongly that development on this site will damage Lambrok Stream. There are protected and vulnerable species in the park that live or breed or feed in the Lambrok. If you feel the same way, please comment on Wiltshire Council’s planning website.
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 