BY JANE TILLEY
On a fateful day in February, a leaflet popped through the letterbox with some startling news for the residents of Ottershaw. The leaflet was from Richborough Estates, a land promoter informing them that an outline planning application for Brox Road Nursery was to be submitted which would turn the field East of Brox Road into housing for 220 dwellings including 2 traveller pitches and a GP surgery. The field had recently been declassified from Greenbelt as have many such sites across Runnymede and beyond, in order to satisfy central government requirements to build 300,000 houses per year. This is despite several brownfield sites available in the borough and as yet undeveloped sites such as at Longcross, where planning permission has already been granted but the housing is yet to be built. A Local Government Association analysis in 2020, ‘reported that there are over a million planning permissions already granted nationwide that haven’t yet led to building work.’
During lockdown, the well-worn footpath at the bottom of the field, which is an important resource for the village, played a vital part in the lives of the community promoting exercise and wellbeing. However, a large housing development would ruin peaceful enjoyment of this much-loved amenity. The masterplan contained in the leaflet showed an example layout of housing that was much denser than the surrounding housing. The plan showed multiple 3 story apartment blocks with balconies more in keeping with urban design than a suburban village. This would inevitably destroy the tranquil, pastoral views from the path that the village valued so much. A flurry of anxious and worried posts on local social media led to a zoom meeting of some of the residents. They came up with the idea of starting an action group to challenge the density and layout of the housing proposal. Although there was nothing they could do about the location of the scheme, they thought that the design was so out of context that there must be some way of challenging the number and type of buildings being proposed.
The small group of residents decided to call their group Brox Road (nursery) Action Group or BRAG and refer to each other as the Braggy Bunch. Coming from various backgrounds, none of the group has any experience of planning regulations but were game on to learn.
First of all, they looked at the Runnymede Local Plan 2030 which is the document that set the housing allocations. They quickly realised that the land promoter was attempting to squeeze too many dwellings into the scheme. Not all of the field that had been declassified from greenbelt had been offered up by the landowners, but Richborough were still trying to promote a higher number of units than had been envisaged by the Local Plan.
In fact, over 25% more which would lead to an increase in housing density for the immediate surroundings of up to 400%. Further digging revealed that an infrastructure analysis showed that Ottershaw had inadequate transport links, poor bus services and that the pressure on the A320 at the Otter roundabout would need to be addressed before any scheme could be commercially sold. After pouring through documents, policies and technical analyses, the Braggy Bunch have come up with at least 45 points of contention where they can suggest that the proposal does not comply with the National Planning Policy Framework or Runnymede’s own planning policies. As well as working on planning policies, BRAG have set up a website and are active on social media. The membership of the group and traffic to the website and on social media has increased rapidly over the last few months.
Richborough have now submitted their outline plan to Runnymede Borough Council and BRAG are able to keep the community of Ottershaw informed through their website so they can voice their opinions on the scheme. While development of the village is inevitable, BRAG feels that it is important that the community has a voice in decisions that affect the village and that housing schemes are located in the right place and serve to improve and enhance the village for everyone rather than just satisfy government mandated housing numbers. Sadly, the race to concrete over our valuable greenbelt seems to be unstoppable but by joining action groups like BRAG, there is a way to work together as a community and push back against inappropriate development.For more information contact info@ottershawbrag.com or visit their website at www.ottershawbrag.com