The Local Plan
A new Local Plan is being developed by Peterborough City Council. The local plan sets out local planning policies and identifies how land is used, determining what will be built where.
The original local plan was supposed to identify land required for building between 2012 until 2026 but because it was based on the Regional Spatial Strategy which was revoked in 2013 the council are having to create a new plan based on the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA).
The village has seen continuous building over the past six years. Of the 283 homes that where allocated in the 2012 to 2026 plan over 85 per cent have already been built. Mayor of Peterborough and Eye Councillor David Sanders is reported to have said at a scrutiny committee this week “You’ve ruined Eye and you should be ashamed of yourselves.” at plans to build 250 more properties in the village. Over the past 20 years, Eye has the largest growth of any village within the Peterborough area. With a larger village comes increased traffic, pressures on services and rising crime as shown here.
In the new plan, a large area to the east of the village has been proposed for further housing. The new estate will completely encompass the school and residential home Field House. Part of this area was in the original plan but due to a campaign by local residents, it was removed from the final 2012 Peterborough Site Allocations DPD. The area taken out by the council (south of Thorney Road (SA.5.7)) was added back in when the plan went before the Secretary of State. Now just four years later the entire area has been added back in within a larger area. The new site actually larger than all the existing sites from the 2012 document in Eye (excluding Eye Green) added together.
“Britain is running out of land for food and faces a potential shortfall of two million hectares by 2030 according to new research.” BBC
For further information on the village’s response to the 2012 document click is here. Population charts for the parish are here.
Update.
The consultation is now live. The eight-week public consultation on the ‘Further’ Draft Local Plan runs from Friday 16 December 2016 until Thursday 9 February 2017. The new proposals are for an additional 3,500 homes across the city council area as part of the process to develop a new Local Plan. Read more here: Consultation on Peterborough’s Local Plan.
Areas allocated in the 2012 plan.
Most of the Bath Road estate and the Verde Road estate were already built and were not included in this plan. The map below shows the areas allocated in the 2012 plan and the new area allocated in the new plan.
The purple area on the map below is the Paston Reserve and Norwood to the west. The Norwood estate at its closest point will be under half a mile from Hodney Road. The number of homes indicated is indicative, in many cases, this has been increased when the estate was constructed.
- SA1.2 Paston Reserve 45.45ha (1,154 homes) (In progress)
- SA1.5 Norwood 76.12 (2,300 homes)
Eye
- SA5.1 Land off Thorney Road 2.94ha (158 homes) (Complete)
- SA5.2 Land off High Street 2.57ha (25 homes) (Complete)
- SA5.4 Land north Thorney Road, adjacent to Dalmark Group 2.49ha (50 homes) (Complete)
- SA5.7 Land south of Thorney Road 2.62ha ( 50 homes) (In progress) (Added by the Secretary of State)
Eye Green
- SA5.3 Warehouse Rear Crowland Road 66 1.28ha (46 homes)(Added by the Secretary of State)
- SA5.4 Land south of Nature Reserve 2.44ha (35 homes)
The city will be consulting on the next reiteration of the new plan in December 2016 but with Communities Secretary, Sajid Javid at the Conservative Party Conference pledging to take unprecedented steps to boost housing delivery and calling for councillors and MPs to be prepared to make difficult calls even if they are unpopular, don’t expect anything to change too soon…
Radio interview
Below is a radio transcript of an interview between BBC Radio Cambridgeshire presenter Paul Stainton and Eye resident Dale McKean on the 18 October 2016.
Paul: Morning Dale. You’ve had quite a few houses foisted on Eye. Looks like you have a few more coming by the looks of it as well.
Dale: Yes, just a bit. Eye’s big in terms of growth. It’s had over 400 houses in the last five years. That equates to about 1000 people on average household occupation. The village could now have 5000 people. It’s not Nimbyism, we’ve done our bit, the school is full now. We’ve had over 100 houses built since the last local plan was produced, not in the period to 2025 which they said they were going to do with another 85 that have got approval to build as well.
“We’ve had over 100 houses built since the last local plan was produced, not in the period to 2025 that they said they were going to do,”
Paul: Plenty of land around there as well, you could have a few more?
Dale: The problem is the impact on the village, you can talk sewage, you can talk about the doctors, you can talk about the youth club and the playgroup all being full but the fundamental really big problem is the school is full. And it’s any number of new houses comes into the village now then it would mean a new form being built into the school.
Paul: David talked about dangers of changing the make up of the way the villages might be. Have chosen to live there, sometimes paid a premium to live in Castor, Ailsworth, Melbourne in south Cambridgeshire. How has Eye been changed by all this building?
Dale: Well there’s been big infill’s between the bypass and various area but what they’ve not done is thought about the schools. From a small road, it’s got a rat run going through it and to increase it now to a three form entry would mean half again in terms of dining facilities, kitchens, assembly area, prayer areas. On top of all of that the classrooms and the outside field. That would be a significant change into the school, the way the school acts as a Primary School for a village and it would have a really big impact on the safety of children outside on the rat run. It really does raise big concerns.
Paul: Eye’s done its bit as far as your concerned. Build them all at Helpston because there is plenty of land around there.
Dale: It’s not about where to build, its whether you can build in the village and whether it can cope with it. And the village might be able to cope with it.
Paul: Don’t do what you did at Hampton. Build the house then think about the infrastructure afterwards…
Dale: Exactly that’s the issue. The school is full, and we’ve got another 85 houses to build that have planning approval. And now the school can’t cope with those 85.
If the plan is to have traffic exiting from the proposed estate onto Eyebury Road that is going to cause no end of problems as the road is just not designed for this. With the local primary school located on this road it already has severe traffic congestion during term time, especially at the start of the day. If these houses are built it would make more sense for them to exit onto Thorney Road through the new estate that is currently being built there.