COMMENT: William Cash on a tale of two plans dividing Bridgnorth

Bridgnorth Town Council will tomorrow hold an online ‘extraordinary meeting’ for councillors to consider which of two sites it prefers for a huge housing development for the historic market town on the River Severn.

Both rival proposals, one proposing 1,050 units off the A458 at Tasley west towards Shrewsbury and the other, proposing 850 units, close to the Stanmore Business Park towards Wolverhampton, claim to be ‘garden village’ schemes. Both are seeking to become the ‘designated’ choice to deliver on Shropshire Council’s Local Plan.

The result has been bitter feuding and village rebellions not seen in the Bridgnorth area since George Osborne’s NPPF planning wars of nearly a decade ago. Back then, I was part of a local resistance group, Save Bridgnorth Hills, with more than 500 supporters in the Bridgnorth and Morville area, who successfully campaigned to stop the beautiful landscape of the Shropshire Hills become industrialised and ruined by a plague of wind turbines.

The battle took several years after we held our very first public meeting at the Down Inn, near Bridgnorth.

More than 100 people of all ages, representing the real community, from farmers to teachers, were crammed into our first packed meeting in the ‘wedding suite’ of the pub.

We soon had to move to Morville village hall for meetings as the numbers grew. It was proper local democracy.

With the pandemic ruling out public meetings, and democratic – rather than merely digital consultation – there is an alarming sense that the sudden, 11th-hour, introduction by mass housing builder Taylor Wimpey of their 1000 plus scheme, with further building west up to 2038, has taken advantage of the lockdown to silence opposition.

Until a few weeks ago, the Stanmore/Hermitage site looked like the clear favourite as the garden village scheme had already been approvedin broad outline. Then Taylor Wimpey came forward with its controversial scheme that would certainly change the face and identity of Bridgnorth as we know it, most worryingly for Bridgnorth tourism.

Yet other than email councillor Robert Tindall, who is opposing the Tasley development, local residents can do very little as this planning battle is not a normal planning application but an attempt to dislodge an existing scheme to get the official Bridgnorth ‘designation’ for the Local Plan.

Shropshire clearly needs new housing, especially for younger people.

But instead of a long protracted public debate as normally occurs, the decision will be made by the Shropshire Cabinet on July 6. That’s in less than a month.

Hence why, as former co-chairman of the Save Bridgnorth Hills campaign group, I have felt it necessary to once again raise awareness in the local community as to why the Tasley site – certainly no ‘garden community’ but in truth a mass housing estate that would put intolerable pressure on the town’s infrastructure – would be a disaster for Bridgnorth, not the least for its impact on local tourism.

The impact on traffic along the already busy enough A458 out of Bridgnorth to Shrewsbury, both through the town and along the by-pass, and to a secret local wildlife reserve, make the Tasley proposal untenable.

The critical thing is to choose the right site for Bridgnorth tourism and its economy, not just to rack up numbers to satisfy housing quotas. The A458 is the gateway to the Shropshire Hills and would ruin the approach and setting of the beautiful town which Charles I famously said boasted the ‘finest views in my kingdom’ when he stood on the ramparts of the castle walls during the civil war.

Beauty

Bridgnorth was the proud winner in the 1996 British High Street awards of Best Large Market Town. This was because the town has the right balance of housing and independent shops, like the award-winning Tanner’s wine merchants, several family butchers and the famous Fridayand Saturday market.The bustling market is just one reason why Bridgnorth was named last year by the Guardian as one of the top sixbest places to live in England. But that could now easily change if the wrong decision is made.

The vast site as proposed by Taylor Wimpey is simply in the wrong place. Having visited both sites it is clear that the definition of ‘green belt’ is merely technical in Stanmore’s case.

Both sites will be built on agricultural land and councillors must not be dissuaded from approving the Stanmore site on the grounds that one site is green belt and the other not.

As I discovered when I went for a walk around the Tasley site the other day, the truth – as councillors will discover for themselves during their site visit – is that the little hamlet of Underton is a secret nature and wildlife jewel of the county thanks to its scenic hidden reservoirs, populated by are birds, ducks and surrounded by wild yellow iris and brown velvety bullrushes.

It’s astonishing that Tasley is not designated as green belt. For itis exactly such a landscape – and the wrong sort of ribbon sprawldevelopment - that the old Town & Country Planning Act was designed toprotect.

It is to be hoped that Philip Dunne MP will back the Stanmore option as he is already familiar with the incredible beauty of the Underton nature reserve. Several years ago he helped Pam Yuille – a resident of Underton – create a network of public footpaths around fifty acres between Mor Brook and Underton Lane, as part of a “Habitat Management and Restoration Plan” which followed quarrying.

The result is a new secret local beauty spot, bursting with local flora and fauna. Shropshire Wildlife Trust have also stepped in to create a public wildlife reserve with strong local tourist and educational benefits. ‘But if this proposed development should be built, it will prove the death-nell of the whole enterprise’ says Yuille.

The crucial weakness of the Tasley site is that it is not a garden village at all as it is not a self-contained site with community facilities, shops, school, petrol station and so forth.

The Town and Country Planning Association states that ‘New Garden Villages’ should be developed as ‘distinct settlements’ where there are sufficient employment and community facilities provided to support the population and where there is an affordable and ‘easily accessible public transport system’ linking up with its ‘parent’ town.

These criteria are not met in the Tasley site. The recent road works that took place to resurface the by-pass and bridge over the Severn on the A458 caused mayhem and the town’s traffic to almost seize up.

They should serve as a warning. A Lego-Land housing development at Tasley will lead to extreme pressure on the road network crossing through Bridgnorth and on the centre of the town.

It is four miles from Tasley to the Stanmore Business Park. There are poor road and public transport connections between the Tasley site and Wolverhampton, Kidderminster and Telford where many people are likely to be employed.

In their response to the Tasley proposal, Morville Parish council voiced their serious concerns the pressures on Bridgnorth and the urban sprawl towards Morville. ‘Current parking facilities in Bridgnorth are inadequate and will become even more difficult if the proposals go ahead, thus discouraging tourism and valuable day visitors to the town’.

But the real winning argument is down to design.

I was pleased to learn that the Stanmore village 850 houses will be modelled on the Duchy of Cornwall’s acclaimed developments at Poundbury next to Dorchester.

The developer has linked up with the Build Better Build Beautiful commission as to plan houses that are well designed and aesthetically appealing.

To me the design is as important as the function and it is for this reason, above all, that the Stanmore site must be backed.