'This is about ensuring we don't change the nature and character of our communities' - Eccleshall councillor calls on county council to support rural residents
An Eccleshall community leader has called on Staffordshire County Council to play its part in preventing the town being “ravaged” by over-development.
Residents fear the rural town could almost double in size over the coming years, with hundreds of new homes earmarked across several sites.
More than 4,000 people have backed a petition to “protect our town from over-development. Councillor Jeremy Pert, who represents the town on the county and borough authorities, has presented the petition to both councils.
He addressed members of Staffordshire County Council’s Economy, Infrastructure and Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee at their latest meeting. Although planning applications for new housing in Eccleshall are determined by Stafford Borough Council, rather than the county council, the authority still has a role to play as a consultee on matters such as highways and flooding.
Councillor Pert said: “This is about ensuring that we don’t change, detrimentally, the character and nature of our very special rural communities – any of our communities, in fairness. I want to focus on those areas that relate to the county council, because those are within the county council’s gift to be really clear about, and to ensure that the county council is not complicit in the wanton destruction of our communities.
“As part of the 337 homes built in the last 15 years in Eccleshall, there was an estate built with 138 new houses. That estate had a sustainable drainage scheme which took a balancing pond and changed the flows of how water flowed historically in the Eccleshall area, adding to the existing flooding within Eccleshall. The county council, several years later, having recognized the flooding of property, then had to spend £250,000 to resolve the flooding that was caused by inadequate drainage, adding to the flooding that was already there.
“My point, and it’s a direct example, is that there is a cumulative impact of development, and someone needs to come up with a robust way of determining what that cumulative impact is so that applications are not permitted which add to the problems that are already there. Instead as a minimum we need to see the resolution of those longstanding issues.
“Unless these applications that are coming through, one by one, fundamentally address some of the shortfalls in facilities – whether that’s the doctor’s, car parking, the width of the High Street that snarls up on a very regular basis, or putting more water through ancient culverts that are already under strain — then frankly, we are all going to spend our time mopping up the failings in the development system. Developers will just get away with building where they want to build and ignore the fundamental impediments that are there.
“We absolutely need to see the infrastructure first. It needs to be well balanced so that the relevant infrastructure is built and put up to resolve the problems that are already within communities.
“To be clear, no one in Eccleshall is saying with their heads in the sand, ‘we don’t want any development’. But it has to be proportionate and it needs to be balanced against the infrastructure needs that are already there and that are masked.
“Unless the developers recognise that, and there is adequate funding that resolves those masked issues, then frankly, we are just going to destroy our rural communities. And we will be remembered by generations to come as the ‘barbarians at the gates’ who threw open the doors for our communities to be ravaged.”
Councillor Pert put forward three recommendations to the committee. He called on the county council, in its response to planning applications on flooding, to “provide strong robust evidence-based arguments as to why certain applications are acceptable and not others”.
He also asked for locally-based evidence to be given to developers to demonstrate needs that must be addressed before new homes are built, such as infrastructure and capacity issues. And he urged the council to be “extremely robust when responding to developers and planning application consultations so that we are not left with picking up the pieces for many years to come.”
The committee resolved to refer the issue directly to the county council’s cabinet, with recommendations that the Cabinet Member for Economy and Skills – acting council leader Martin Murray – liaise with Stafford Borough Council to relay the opinions of the scrutiny committee. It has also been recommended that the Councillor Murray collaborate with Stafford Borough Council to identify and address residents’ concerns in Eccleshall, and that he request that Stafford Borough Council provide Staffordshire County Council a greater involvement in long-term strategic planning.
