Dennybrook is not included in Bedford Borough’s draft local plan 2040. No sites in Staploe parish have been included in the plan.
The consultation on Bedford Borough Council’s Local Plan 2040 and Call for Sites closed at 5pm on 3rd September. Staploe Parish Council had an extension to respond by 17th September.
Here are our responses to the consultations.
Staploe Call for sites response 2040 Word
Staploe Call for sites response 2040 PDF
Staploe Local Plan response 2040 Word
Staploe Local Plan response 2040 PDF
Why Dennybrook?
Due to government targets Bedford Borough Council needs to build 12,500 more homes by 2040 and members are preparing a new Local Plan Review to 2040. As part of this process they issued a “Call for Sites” and several landowners in Honeydon, Begwary and Wyboston area put forward a large site which they called Dennybrook Garden Village. They have worked with Taylor Wimpey to prepare a vision document which shows a town of up to 10,800 homes spanning all the way from the edge of Colmworth in the west to Wyboston in the east and from the Bushmead Road in the north to Chawston in the south. The hamlet of Honeydon is shown effectively surrounded by a housing estate.
Bedford Borough Council has now issued a consultation on the Local Plan 2040. The Clerk and out planning consultant James Tipping have jointly prepared a summary and explanation of this for residents of our parish which was presented at our public meeting on 17th August. It is available here:
https://1drv.ms/p/s!AtWwPVNA2SDtgZBpg7C9O7n1mf9_5w?e=Ho2OHo
We urge you to read this presentation before you respond to the Draft Local Plan
Bedford Borough Council propose that residents of the Borough choose from 4 options. Three of these options include a new settlement at Wyboston (later referred to as Dennybrook). Two of the three offer a choice between a settlement at Wyboston or a settlement at Little Barford just south of the power station (also in Bedford Borough); another proposes a settlement in both locations. The settlements proposed in the draft local plan describe 2,500 homes at Wyboston and / or 3,500 homes at Little Barford.
However, transport models linked to the Local Plan describe scenarios of up to 10,500 homes by 2050 which is only a little lower than the number in the Dennybrook Vision Document prepared by Taylor Wimpey. Bedford Borough Council have agreed that if this were to go ahead the 2,500 homes described in the plan would be the first stage of a much larger development of up to 10,800 homes. To give you an idea of the scale of this it would be more than double the current size of Cambourne. Loves Farm in St. Neots only has 1,400 homes.
Taylor Wimpey have also commissioned an ecological strategy and a landscape briefing note for the proposed new town.
The development would be on a completely greenfield site despite alternative options being offered to Bedford Borough Council in their call for sites – some of which include significant proportions of brownfield land. The land on which the proposed new town would be built is a quiet rural area surrounded by farmland, livestock and wildlife. There are rare species such as Bath Asparagus, and orchids in the designated roadside nature reserves and prolific wildlife such as badgers, deer and the rare Small Eggar Moth.
The selection of the controversial “northern route” for East West Rail and the government’s Oxford Cambridge arc appear to be used as the justification for this and other huge developments in the area such as that proposed within Central Bedfordshire Council at Tempsford.
Please do respond to the Local Plan 2040.
Scroll down to “Have Your Say” and click on the purple box “Draft Plan and Supporting Documents Online Response”. You can then click on the purple speech bubbles to the left of each paragraph of the draft plan to make a comment. There is no need to comment on all of the paragraphs. You can see we are not planning to comment on all the paragraphs in our draft representations. We urge you also to comment on each of the sites of interest to you in the Call for Sites under Call for sites consultation . The sites are arranged with several per page arranged by site number. Once you have found the site you can click on the purple speech bubble top left of the site description. You will need to register for an account to comment.
Site numbers which may be of interest are: Dennybrook 977, Cobholden in Duloe 997, Manor Farm in Duloe 455, Duloe Field 3420, Cottage Farm (Upper Staploe) 908, Flints Field (adjacent to A1 and B645) 930, Top Homes (adjacent to A1 east of Duloe) 931, Little Barford 907, Twinwoods (industrial park near Thurleigh) 883 and Colworth (near Sharnbrook) 1002.
The deadline is 3rd September 2021.
Darrren Edwards (a resident of Honeydon) was interviewed about the proposals on Black Cat Radio on 21st June 2021. https://1drv.ms/u/s!BNWwPVNA2SDt2jamelMAd6AlWVO2?e=1NSH13VcYkCX5y0qcz2XmA&at=9
What is Staploe Parish Council’s View?
We consulted residents about the elements of life in our parish that they valued and wanted to protect in a recent Neighbourhood Plan questionnaire and the most popular responses were the peace, quiet, countryside views and rural setting. There was no support for extensive development in the parish and the need for homes from residents was tiny. Therefore, we are campaigning against this development.
We are concerned about the catastrophic implications for Honeydon and the impact of huge volumes of traffic in Staploe, Duloe, Wyboston, Colmworth and St. Neots and flooding in St. Neots as the area is all upstream of their watercourses. Bedford Borough Council have ruled out any further development north of Bedford due to issues on the A6. If this is the case then this rules out some sites favoured by Staploe Parish Council such as Twinwoods near Thurleigh which includes 70ha of Brownfield land. Therefore the Parish Council are proposing that the best option is dispered development in option 2a of the plan. This includes urban expansions south of Bedford, some development around new rail stations south of Bedford and a new settlement of no more than 3,085 at Little Barford (which is a smaller site and would not be the first phase of a large new town as is the case with Dennybrook). However, we are also questioning the transport modelling which rules out the possibility of any development north of Bedford because we believe it is necessary to make these improvements for the existing development planned to 2030 and to enable residents to access the new east west rail station in Bedford. We believe that infrastructure funds from a new development at eg. Twinwoods may enable these mitigations on the A6.
Here are some photos of the Dennybrook area:
Dennybrook Area: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ggMtjsqT5Ygv7eKN9
Dennybrook Highways: https://photos.app.goo.gl/jFgoJhYKhGZ3t7U8A
Honeydon flooding: https://photos.app.goo.gl/9hmnhfY7mN2a2J3X6
How You Can Help
1. Donate.
Staploe Parish Council need to raise £10,000 for advice from a professional planner on how to challenge this development and to assist us with printing costs. We need to understand how to challenge this development as soon as possible as there will only be one meaningful consultation on this and it will be held in July and August of this year. You can donate at:
- www.justgiving.com Search for Dennybrook or type in this link: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/dennybrook?utm_term=a6nNJ5ykr 2.9% of your donation plus 25p will be deducted from your donation
- Make a bank transfer to Staploe Parish Council sort code 20-74-81 Acc number 30833940 with reference “Denny” followed by your surname. Then send us an e-mail so we know who has sent it.
2. Respond.
If you are in Bedford Borough then read the Bedford Borough Council Local Plan 2040 consultation and respond before the deadline of 3rd September 2021. See above for instructions.
If you are in Huntingdonshire then please e-mail developmentcontrol@huntingdonshire.gov.uk with any concerns you may have.
3. Keep in Touch.
We would like to keep you informed about the Local Plan Consultation and further ways you can help. Please sign up to the parish news on our website. https://staploe-pc.gov.uk/ and enter your e-mail address in the subscribe box— see image below. Then you will receive notifications when new posts are added to the website.
You can also keep in touch on our Facebook group—search for Staploe Parish Council.
A resident has set up a closed Facebook group called “We Chose Rural Life” to oppose excessive housing development on the Cambridgeshire—Bedfordshire border. https://www.facebook.com/groups/386148712814515 and a Whatsapp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/lZh5zXpySMd3Vj8ideuVym
Please note the Facebook group and Whatsapp groups are not administered by the Parish Council. If you do not have access to broadband then please telephone the Clerk to register for paper copies of the consultation. Tel. 01480 471 526 or write to her at 33, Staploe, St. Neots PE19 5JA
4. Record.
Please record wildlife, flooding and any issues you think may be of relevance to this development.
5. Volunteer.
We hope to form a cross parish steering group between affected parishes and St. Neots town council to run this campaign. Would you be interested in joining? Also, do you have any expertise in planning or know anyone you can recommend to assist the group?
6. Distribution.
Please offer to help deliver leaflets and newsletters.
See further information below this map.
Further Information
In the draft of the consultation document for the Local Plan 2040 there are 4 proposals to choose from and 3 of the four include Wyboston – later referred to as Dennybrook in linked documents – with 2,500 houses by 2040 and a further development at Little Barford of 3,085 homes by 2040. However, two of the 3 options including Dennybrook offer one new settlement with a choice between Little Barford or Dennybrook. The fourth option includes further development of 750 homes in Eastern parishes along a transport corridor of Cardington, Cople, Great Barford, Little Barford, Roxton, Willington and Wyboston. None of the latter would be directly in our parish.
There is no mention of Twinwoods (at Thurleigh – a brownfield site with burned out buildings) or Colworth garden villages (the latter being on poorer quality agricultural land than Dennybrook) despite these having been resubmitted in the call for sites.
The Mayor has told a resident of Honeydon that “Twinwoods does not form part of our emerging strategy because of the highway constraints to the north of Bedford. It is not currently clear that these could be overcome.”
Here is the consultation:
The linked transport model specifically for Dennybrook includes a scenario for up to 10,150 by 2050. See p11 of this document:
This document also mentions various mitigations for Dennybrook some of which seem unlikely to help eg. a new station at Colworth – near Sharnbrook – when there is no new settlement planned at Colworth. It also mentions an upgraded link between the A6 and the A1 through Bolnhurst and Thurleigh. The Clerk asked Bedford Borough about this and received this response:
“As you may have read in the Local Plan papers, the Council has commissioned AECOM (our transport consultant ) to develop a high level strategic transport model for the Borough as part of our Local Plan evidence base. The model contains all of the information that we have about development and transport schemes which are already planned for, and is set up to so that it can model additional changes to the network which have the potential to assist in mitigating the impacts of additional development. As you have picked up from reading the transport background papers, the Thurleigh – Bolnhurst link has been tested as a potential mitigation scheme.
I would note that these potential mitigations schemes are not something that we are currently planning for. The task at this stage is to test what the impact of making various improvements might be so that, as the plan progresses, there can be further discussion about what infrastructure improvements could be necessary to accompany particular developments if they were to be included in the pre submission plan.
It is in this context that the Thurleigh – Bolnhurst link was included in the transport modelling reports. The route was assumed to be an improvement of the existing route between Milton Ernest, Thurleigh, Bolnhurst, Upper Staploe and Eaton Socon.
In respect of the inclusion of a Colworth station, we have concluded that a station in that location would be unlikely to have an impact on traffic around Dennybrook.
The transport modelling is an iterative process and we will run the model again as we refine the options and choose our final spatial strategy for the plan. If Dennybrook were to be taken forward to the pre submission plan I would not expect Colworth station to be identified as a mitigation measure for that site.”
There is another transport model for the new settlements (Denybrook and Little Barford) and the Black Cat.
The consultation is due to close on 3rd September
We have been informed that we can’t use our Locality grant funds for the Neighbourhood Plan to challenge the Local Plan. The Parish Council discussed our next steps regarding this at their extraordinary Parish Council meeting on Monday 7th June. https://staploe-pc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/Meetings/Parish-Council-Meetings/Minutes/Minutes-2021/Draft-SPC-Minutes-June-2021-Extra.pdf
Thanks to generous donations from residents we have been able to commission Parker Planning Services based in Cambridge to advise us how to respond to the draft Local Plan. We continue to fund raise towards our target of £10,000.
First Flyer:
Say No to Dennybrook for online viewing
Letters to and from Turners to Richard Fuller MP re Dennybrook June 2021
Our MP Richard Fuller recently raised a number of issues relating to excessive development, the Ox – Cambs Arc and East West Rail with the housing minister Christopher Pincher. See below for more information.
Richard-Fuller-MP-Parliamentary-Debate-with-Housing-Minister-Christopher-Pincher-9th-June-2021.pdf
A number of residents and Councillors (from St Neots Town Council, Staploe, and Wyboston Parish Councils and the Borough Councillor for Great Barford who was standing in for our Borough Councillor Tom Wootton) met with Richard Fuller MP on 28th July in Honeydon. The minutes of our meeting are available here: