CLEVEDON CIVIC SOCIETY.

May 2020

Dear Sir/Madam,

APPLICATION 20/P/0605/R3.

Proposed Special Needs School on land adjacent to Brookfield Walk, Clevedon.

Although the Civic Society is aware of the need for the school to expand, we cannot support this application on this site for the following reasons;

● Detrimental effect on the environment of the residents of Brookfield Walk.This area is separated from the Town by Northern Way, and so access to open space in their own area is particularly valuable, and building on it constitutes a serious loss of amenity.

All the residents of Brookfield Walk use the single vehicular access to Northern way which is already very busy, and seriously congested at rush hours, so the additional traffic generated by the school would exacerbate an already overloaded part of the road network.

● Policy DM69 in the Sites and Policies Plan states that;

“The proposal should not prejudice the living conditions of the neighbouring residents”

Loss of amenity space and increased traffic will certainly prejudice the living conditions of the residents, and so would be contrary to the policy, which also says that local green space has a high level of protection. We cannot see any proposal in the application documents for replacement of this green space nearby, or indeed anywhere.

● Building in the greenbelt.

There must be very special circumstances for building in the greenbelt to be permitted.

The Civic Society is against any encroachment into the greenbelt round Clevedon,as it inevitably sets a precedent, and by the site selection criteria set out in the application, this site falls short on several counts so does not constitute a very special circumstance.

● Travel distance from existing school in Worle;

In the site selection document it is stated that 9 sites were discounted because they are more than 25 minutes travel time away. We dispute the travel times attributed to this site particularly when travelling at rush hours and in the holiday season, and suggest if 25 minutes is the critical time, this site should have been discounted.

● Site ownership;

In the supporting documentation it states that the site must be owned by NSC, allowing the development to proceed quickly and reducing costs as the uplift in site value attributable to planning permission would not be applicable.

In the public consultation summary, it states that NSC owns the site.

The planning application form states that the applicant is NSC, and the site owner is Persimmon Homes, therefore in this case this site does not comply with the selection criteria.

● Public consultation;

The Civic Society expressed written reservations about this site at the public consultation at Castlewood, and this is not mentioned in the consultation summary. We therefore have severe misgivings about the stated outcome of the consultation process.

For the above reasons we request that this application on this site be REFUSED

Yours Sincerely,

Clevedon Civic Society.