FOLLOWING on from Bob Smyth's very informative article in the Review concerning the Forest of Dean Local Plan Inquiry, I think readers may be interested to learn that the developer Heron has been allocated two complete days on the 10th and 11th December 2002, to pursue their wish to build 160 dwellings on the field adjacent to Wyedean School in Sedbury. Incidentally, previous attempts to build on that site have been turned down twice on appeal, in 1990 and 1991! There were many reasons for the failed appeal, one being that the proposed access was considered too dangerous, another being that the proposed development would cause an unacceptable extension of the settlement boundaries resulting in conurbation.
The extant Gloucestershire Structure Plan (GSP), when adopted, did not require any houses to be built in the parish of Tidenham, as there was no need. However, there is planning consent for some 120 houses, at a few locations in Tutshill, Woodcroft and Sedbury. These will be registered as windfall as they are not required by the GSP. There are 70 houses (the quantity permitted under previous Planning Policy Guidance (PPG) densities for the allocated area) consented at Bigstone, Tutshill. Furthermore, the building densities per acre have been increased under the latest PPG, and may permit additional houses to be built on that particular site. We have already had some 12 houses built on Danes Hill, and a further five in Grahamstone Road, and a couple of individual houses built elsewhere in the parish.
I wish Heron would not insist on considering Tutshill and Sedbury as a settlement of an appropriate scale to justify a housing allocation. These two settlements are individual and should remain so ad infinitum; after all, the A48 (T) road, and the main railway line between Cardiff and the Midlands separate them. Further development on the Wyedean field would amount to coalescence, which is to be avoided at all costs.
The parish of Tidenham is not a functional part of Chepstow. Let us not forget to whom we pay our council tax, the Forest of Dean District Council. Monmouth Borough Local Plan that was adopted in 1997 made mention that local housing choice will be further enhanced if projected major development takes place, which referred to the Heron New Town. With the ongoing St Lawrence development of several hundred houses, which may ultimately extend south to the motorway (as many as 750 houses has been mentioned), there is even less justification for approximately 180 houses at such an unsuitable location (just try driving to Chepstow at 8.30am most weekdays) as Wyedean field.
To resort to a local plan from the previous millennium, is surely grasping at straws. I have been advised by an irrefutable source, that if GAG had not started and completed their successful campaign against the 2,000 houses in Sedbury, the new town would have gone through on the nod. GAG is still keeping a watching brief. – John Powell.