Monmouthshire Local Development Plan Preferred Strategy Consultation on Proposed Rural Housing Allocations – June 2010 Draft Report:
Further Response from Llangybi Fawr Community Council – Previous Presentor No.51 : July 2010
As part of the consultation process the Public Participation slot on Llangybi Fawr’s July 20th Council Meeting was allocated to a short presentation from MCC’s Local Development Plans Team Manager, followed by a question and answer session; and between 60 and 70 members of the local community were present. Although many of them will be making their own submissions, the following represents Council’s own (second) response, some of which may also echo the tenor of the meeting’s discussions.
Llangybi Fawr C C supports in principle the attempts to provide additional affordable housing across the County, councillors being well aware that there are those who would wish to continue to reside in the area or move into such a rural location, but cannot find suitably-priced, suitably-sized properties available. Councillors do not, however, feel that the figures estimated of people seeking such provision in our area are based on adequate research and that the actual number could be much lower. Council has at earlier meetings discussed the situation, in the specific knowledge that the Llangybi Ward is the one most likely to be considered for such rural housing proposals.
However, at least three major factors about Llangybi have always led councillors to conclude that further affordable housing is difficult to secure – and indeed, that any further housing development of any sort could prove detrimental. Therefore Council continues to have grave reservations about the current LDP proposals for Llangybi – and largely because of those same three factors. Namely:
1. The history and experience of developments over the past 43 years;
2. The nature of the terrain and infrastructure in and around the village and its VDB;
3. The present housing situation in the village.
In reaching such a conclusion Council is not convinced that the County’s Assessment of Village Candidate Sites was sufficiently thorough, perhaps relying too much on desk-top analyses and statistics rather than upon on-site research into local knowledge and experience, the latter of which would have produced very different, less compliant conclusions. Clearly the existing Village Development Boundary was established for very sound landscape, infrastructural and population-density reasons and therefore ought to not be redrawn just to accommodate a new principle of more housing (affordable or market-driven) in rural areas regardless of the consequences – consequences which villages will have to live with and pay for well beyond the life of transient government and local authority departments and their policies.
1. The history and experience of developments over the past 43 years since the first major new housing projects in Llangybi in the 1960s have shown that developers are not interested in and will whenever possible avoid attempts to have affordable housing built. Several developments were expected to offer such housing but developers either kept the numbers such as avoid to any obligation to create affordable dwellings or simply reneged on promises – the small development, for example, on the former village school site at Kennett Grange by Westbury was meant to include affordable houses but never did so, and the development at Clos Cartref was kept to the number of quite expensive houses below the current affordable housing constraints on Meadgate – and so Llangybi has experienced periodic small, not always well-integrated pockets of quite costly housing with no affordable developments.
In the meantime quite a lot of the earlier housing, of less modern design, has become much less easy to sell as a result – there are, for example, at least half a dozen properties in the village which have been either unoccupied or unsold for extremely long periods. It is clear that there is no great demand for any further mid- priced, larger houses in Llangybi, which is what councillors fear that releasing more sites to developers will lead to rather than any of the affordable housing envisaged. Especially as the LDP states that the proposed sites would be ‘primarily’ but not exclusively for affordable housing: a let-out clause for enterprising developers. Furthermore, councillors are led to believe that the ratios to be required of new developers, of 60% Affordable : 40% Market Driven would not apply to each separate development but overall across all new developments in total- which could lead to a very different outcome.
2. Over that same 43 year period since the mid 60s developers seeking to expand the village have persistently ignored factors which stem from Llangybi’s terrain and infrastructure. The western side of the village in particular, around the Ton Road area covering St Cybi Avenue, Drive and Rise, and the Chase, has innumerable underground springs which eventually and continually force their way to the surface or are disturbed by building work. Some of these already cause serious surface water and dangerous winter- icing conditions, breaking through tarmac and concrete at various locations and regularly eroding road surfaces, whilst the fields on the slopes at the edge of the VDB – some of which are candidate sites – are regularly waterlogged or have streams running though them. During heavy rain this situation has become so serious that several residents along this stretch of Ton Road keep sandbags ready to protect their properties; whilst the main stream now rises to quite dangerous levels much more often than in earlier years.
A lot of houses in St Cybi Avenue and Drive, for example, also have seen a dramatic increase in surface water on drives and gardens, all caused over the years by more and more building disturbance to underground springs and by more impermeable surfaces. Therefore any plans to build further dwellings on these western slopes will create serious circumstances for existing householders and could incur possible legal actions through the Environment Agency against those responsible.
Much the same problems have been experienced over the sewerage system, and Council believes that, whatever the relevant authorities might say, the present system cannot cope with much further expansion. Planners and developers may not be aware that there have been problems of blockage, overspill, and camera-searches in particular in the lower parts of the village around St Cybi Drive and Avenue, where much of the system remains the responsibility and expense of each house-owner, the pipe work in those areas remaining unadopted until it enters the main system along the Ton Road. Developments higher up the village have all too often merely linked into this older system with no enhancements, hence causing problems for the lower properties. Any further developments will aggravate an already overtaxed system, again likely to lead to legal actions by those affected. Clearly both in terms of surface water and sewerage the village’s infrastructure is already very out of date and barely adequate.
There is also the major problem of utilities provision in the village, as Llangybi is not on the Natural Gas grid and residents must rely upon electricity, oil or LPG for their hot water and heating – all of which are very costly outlays, and especially so for occupants of any affordable housing. There would also be the added problem of large LPG/Oil vehicles having to navigate the narrow routes to some of the proposed new housing sites.
That latter concern leads us to another infrastructural problem for further development – namely the traffic density situation, especially on the village’s side- roads, which are already in a bad condition, narrowing quickly as they rise from the level areas, and are already quite heavily congested with farm vehicles, house-owners’ cars, and delivery and service transport. The upper stretch of Ton Road, for example, once it reaches the 30 mph sign is far too dangerous to be asked to accommodate even more traffic; and parts of this road are also unpavemented. New housing developments of any description ought not to be placed where the traffic will enter such roads as these.
3. It is important that the LDP recognises the current housing situation in Llangybi. The village already has at least 36 affordable houses managed by the Monmouthshire Housing Association, representing a quite high 18% of the village’s housing stock. Additionally as the quite aged, aging population of many of these houses pass on, more and more of these affordable properties will become available to younger applicants – something which is already happening and is changing the original nature of the Glanynant complexes as old people’s housing.
The other problem with developing affordable housing in such rural areas is car ownership – affordable housing by its very nature is less likely to be provided with garage spaces yet, despite the (barely adequate) bus service, potential occupants of such housing will (a) be younger and more keen to be independently mobile and (b) be car owners. On-street parking is already a problem on some of the village’s narrower streets and, especially where some of the candidate sites are located, such on-street parking is neither safe nor desirable.
It is for all the above outlined reasons that Llangybi Fawr C C continues to oppose both some of the arguments put forward in the LDP for both affordable and market-driven housing developments in Llangybi and its proposed candidate sites.
Whilst in-fill at sites CS/0059 and CS/0061 would, as the LDP suggests, keep new housing within the current VDB and are at the lower parts of the village, previous plans for housing on at least one of these two sites have been rejected for various traffic and other reasons; and may not in any case have been envisaged as for affordable housing rather than more expensive properties. All the other sites should be discounted, whether accessible or not, on all the strong grounds thoroughly detailed earlier in this response: and the VDB should not be in any way adjusted merely to ‘legitimise’ proposals which would otherwise be indefensible. Nor does Council believe that the criteria for ‘preferring’ certain sites and rejecting others have been evenly or demonstrably applied.
Llangybi Fawr CC, as stated at the outset, remains opposed to the principle of Llangybi being categorised as a Main Village suited for further housing development: and the village patently does not require any injection of what the LDP describes as fresh blood, enhanced facilities and new amenities, most of which already apply. Council also considers the County’s assessment of the candidate sites and of the village’s infrastructure to be flawed and the LDP’s plans should be rejected as inappropriate in a rural location already in danger of being too urbanised, with all the usual attendant problems.
Clerk to Llangybi Fawr Community Council