Save Eccleshall campaigners fighting plans for hundreds of new houses in their Staffordshire market town step up their campaign
Eccleshall campaigners fighting plans for hundreds of new homes in their town over the coming years have urged residents to join their battle.
Residents fear the historic country market town could almost double in size over the coming years due to the level of proposed housebuilding across 10 separate sites.
Proposals include more than 500 new homes earmarked for land on the eastern edge of Eccleshall, to the west of Blurtons Lane. And two further applications – one for up to 55 homes on land to the south of Shaws Lane and the other for up to 48 homes on land south of Campion Close – are currently under consultation after being submitted to Stafford Borough Council on the same day in August.
The consultations run until October 27 for the Shaws Lane development and October 31 for the Campion Close plans. The Save Eccleshall community group is calling on residents to voice their concerns to Stafford Borough Council before the end of the month.
They are also raising awareness of the proposed development and the Save Eccleshall campaign through a window display at Chokbox, run by Martin Peet in the High Street, which features art by “Genuine Fakes” creator John Myatt. Other local supporters of the campaign include residents who have donated towards the fighting fund and the Ecclian Society, which has covered £500 printing costs, and more information can be found at saveeccleshall.com.
Save Eccleshall group member Susie Clowes said: “We delivered 1,400 leaflets last week helping people with objection letters. The support has been brilliant, there is a high level of interest.”
She said there were concerns the extra homes would make existing issues in the town even worse, such as traffic on Shaws Lane and discharge of sewage into the River Sow. Parking and traffic are also an issue on the High Street, she added, and last week she witnessed an ambulance battling for 20 minutes to pass through.
Parish councillor Chris Wilkins said: “More than 1,000 houses will mean 2,500 people, adding 50% to the Eccleshall population. The doctors are giving appointments one month in advance – the infrastructure is not there to cope with the extra houses.
“Eccleshall will go from being an historic market town to being an urban part of Stone. All the character of Eccleshall will disappear.
“The proposed developments are all on green fields and all are producing food for the country at the moment. If we concrete over every green field there is, we are going to have to import our food and the cost of living will go up.”
A petition signed by more than 4,000 people, titled “Protect our town from over-development”, is set to be discussed by Stafford Borough Council’s cabinet on Thursday (October 16) after being presented to the authority at a meeting last month.
Eccleshall councillor Jeremy Pert also presented the petition to Staffordshire County Council at its latest full meeting last Thursday (October 9). He said: “The petition has the sum total of 4,653 signatures and has been viewed 11,000 times online.
“Eccleshall is an attractive market town, it has 1,500 homes and has grown in the last 14 years by 25%, so we are not against development. But because Stafford Borough Council’s Local Plan has not been reviewed in the last seven years, with the bringing in of mandatory housing targets and the doubling of these in rural areas we risk to see an additional 1,500 homes.
“Eccleshall was noted earlier this year as the best village in Staffordshire, and yet this plan risks overburdening existing facilities including car parking, doctors, highways and schools, flooding and the like. I know the borough council is the planning authority, but this council is a key statutory consultee on highways, schools, parking and flooding.
“We need to take into account the impact of cumulative development. It should not be for developers to decide where houses should and can be built – creating communities is instead a strategic role, a borough and county council role.”
