It looks as though the proposals to build 5700 new homes around the area and on the site of Filton Airfield will this week be given the go ahead. Putting to one side the argument that the nearby companies and in particular Rolls Royce and BAe systems will live to regret the loss of the runway, I wonder if local residents have considered the implications for the entire area. I have and it looks a grim prospect.
What is not often mentioned is that conservative estimates suggest an additional 11000 cars will be added to the roads. In case you hadn’t already noticed, the whole area grinds to a halt mornings and evenings already so building the odd extra junction or bus lane will not make a great deal of difference. We know also that there will be the need for at least one new secondary school and as many as six primary schools, as well as the doubling of the size of the Cribbs Causeway Mall Shopping Centre, which many will welcome, always assuming it is actually possible to fight your way through the traffic to get there.
Add the huge development of Harry Stoke – you have to see this in order to understand just how vast this development is, too – and the continuing expansion of the UWE, not to mention the vast numbers of civil servants at the nearby MOD behemoth, and you have a recipe for utter chaos.
This is not planned sustainable development, it is just paving over everything, much of which is on green fields and it seems to me that the inevitable and vital infrastructures will be considered later by way of a back of a fag packet calculation.
No one is saying that we don’t need more housing, of course not, but before we arrived in South Gloucestershire, the Frankenstein monster of Bradley Stoke was created, along with a significant development on farm land to the west. Whilst much of the new development is on the old airfield, a lot isn’t, and once again beautiful fields are to be paved over. Soon, there will be no separation between Bristol and South Gloucestershire.
The privately owned run for profit “public” transport companies will be laughing all the way to the bank with the new housing, but it is going to be abject misery for the people who already live here and just getting in and out of the area is going to be increasingly more difficult.
I am sure there was “consultation” by the authorities, although I don’t remember being asked for my opinions and in any event the voices of the people count for much less than the developers and the councillors.
Goodbye South Gloucestershire, it was nice knowing you and hello to a new concrete jungle.
