South Gloucestershire Council New Local Plan

The South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) Local Plan proposes to build numerous mass developments, in excess of 6000 new homes, across our green belt in the Eastern Fringe of Bristol, which will have a devastating impact on historic communities including Bitton, Bridgeyate, Goose Green, Hanham, Lyde Green, Mangotsfield, Oldland Common, Pucklechurch, Shortwood, Siston, Warmley, Webbs Heath and Wick.

What are we doing?

Save Our Green Spaces – South Gloucestershire (SOGS-SG) are campaigning to prevent the Local Plan from attaining final approval.

To achieve this, we will need to raise substantial funds to help you to fight this hugely damaging Local Plan.

With your help we raised sufficient funds to contribute in a consortium with a couple of people who wish to remain anonymous, to employ a planning Consultant – Context Planning, to assist us in preparing our objections to the Regulation 19 stage of the proposed Local Plan.

The proposed Local Plan will move to the next stage - a public examination by the Planning Inspectorate which is anticipated to happen during 2026. In order for our objections to be properly represented and examined, we intend to again employ Context Planning to represent us in person at the enquiry, but this will require more funds and we need your ongoing support. We cannot assume the anonymous consortium members will be willing to offer further funding. For now, we assume we will need to fully fund Context Planning ourselves. We have therefore increased our original funding target from £3,000 to £15,000 to reflect this.

Who are Save Our Green Spaces South Gloucestershire (SOGS-SG)?

Save Our Green Spaces (SOGS) were established back in 2008 and successfully fought proposals under the last Labour Government to build an urban extension of 5000 homes on Green Belt land between Warmley and Shortwood. Some of the original SOGS members have been instrumental in setting up the new Save Our Green Spaces – South Gloucestershire (SOGS-SG) group to oppose proposals set out in South Gloucestershire Council’s emerging Local Plan.

SOGS-SG wish to make it clear to the public that they are not opposed to building new homes within our communities where there is a demonstrable housing need - we have seen a large increase in new homes in Warmley, Oldland Common, Wick, Bitton, Pucklechurch and Mangotsfield over recent years. We call this sustainable, organic growth. We want to see local people have the option to stay within the area that they grew up in.

What SOGS-SG does strongly object to, is the huge number of new homes that this Local Plan proposes to build on the East Bristol Green Belt.

So what are the arguments?

South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) claim that they are building thousands of new homes on our green belt – for local people! This is simply not true. Building thousands of new homes in one area of South Gloucestershire, and building a small number elsewhere, will simply lead to thousands of people migrating into our area from other parts of Bristol, or other parts of the country. This excessive number of homes in one area is just an easy (but hugely damaging) option for SGC to build the number of homes that the government demands.

Productive agricultural land will be lost. We live in a dangerous world. Food security is extremely important for this country.

Large-scale development on greenfield sites is a developers dream. Smaller, sustainable developments protect our villages from losing their unique identity but they do not return the huge profit margins that the developers are looking for. SOGS-SG would support SGC if it spread the required housing numbers equally across the whole of South Gloucestershire. House buyers would like a choice on where to buy their new home wouldn’t they? This Local Plan dictates that most of the new homes in South Glos in the period up to 2040 will be east of Kingswood.

South Gloucestershire Council previously rejected virtually every proposed site in our area during the early stages of their Local Plan, with most development planned for the northern boundary of South Glos. They have now ruled out large scale developments in Thornbury, Yate, Coalpit Heath and Chipping Sodbury, due to the lack of infrastructure there. If that same logic is applied to our area, then you would not build here either. Our roads are at capacity; doctors, dentists and general healthcare services are struggling to cope with the demand they have now.

Yate has a railway station, a minor injuries unit and a physical health rehab unit. We have none of these.

If you would like to find out more about SOGS-SG then you will find us on:-

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sogssg

Alternatively,

take a look at our website www.sogssg.org

Thank you for your support.