Q2

Housing Objective reworded as:
To seek to maintain a sustainable balance between housing, the environment and employment opportunities.

Housing: sustainability must include energy generation at a household or estate level through solar, wind, air source and other sustainable methods. This will in turn feed in to economic and environmental objectives.
Healthy communities: given an aging population this does need to be local and to include local bus services. The relief road is essential for air quality as well as de-stressing travel around the town. Also, health is mental as well as physical. Supporting local theatres is an essential component of this.

With reservations. Any Industrial development should not detract from the enjoyment of local vistas or cause excessive disruption to local residents.

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I am a local resident of the village of Drinkstone in Mid Suffolk District Councils area. Whilst I understand that Drinkstone Parish Council are likely to respond to your consultation document direct, I would like personally to make the following comments / observations, regarding the above;

Whilst my wife and I have only been a residents in Drinkstone for 6 months, my wife and I were residents in Woolpit for over 23 Years and we personally do not want to see Drinkstone being ruined by ad-hoc housing developments, similar to those agreed for Woolpit.

Public transport, local amenities and the road infrastructure within Drinkstone are not suitably geared up for an increase in housing stock without significant investment in such matters. More importantly by the council focusing on housing stock numbers, etc. there is a severe risk of ruining the picturesque nature of our village, similar to what has happened and continues to happen in Woolpit.

My specific comments on your consultation document are;

Q1 What do you think the vision should be? and Q2 Do you agree with the identified objectives?
* The current statement does not give adequate clarity for me to properly assess what the impact will be on Drinkstone. Apart from the objective of building more houses, there is little in the vision statement that demonstrates any innovative thinking on key issues in proposed policy addressing the economy, environment and infrastructure. As a result there is a serious risk that the pressures of the need for more housing stock, will result in the council ignoring totally environmental, infrastructure and conservation matters to the detriment of the whole village.

Q3 Are there other objectives which should be added?
* Infrastructure upgrades should precede the granting of large scale planning permissions.
* For smaller housing developments there should be a more rigorous assessment of the cumulative impact on the existing infrastructure before permission is granted, and improvements should be made before any development begins where they are deemed necessary.

Q5 What is most important for your town or village?
The basic infrastructure should be improved before any further development is considered in the Drinkstone area. The key areas of concern regarding infrastructure are;
* Poor secondary road infrastructure
* The village does not have access to gas and therefore to continue to allow development a housing stock with oil (environmentally damaging) will not fulfil the requirements of the councils environmental strategy
* No local amenities

Q11 Do you agree with the proposed criteria approach to rank settlements? & Q12 Do you agree with proposed settlement hierarchy?
* There appears to be factual errors in the scoring. Our village (Drinkstone) is 8 miles from a town, not 3 and the main settlement is 2.5 miles from a core village, not 1.5.
* The hinterland village category is too large and should be broken down further to distinguish those villages scoring low on the hinterland scale.

Q15 If a new settlement was to be planned in the area, where should it be located?
* It is likely that a significant proportion of any new residents will want to commute to work, most likely out of the local area, so any new settlements should be located close to a major roads with ideally good and close access to the rail network.

Q 64 What do you consider the key infrastructure issues in your community?
* Inadequate public transport and road infrastructure, means that the infrastructure around and in Drinkstone will not be able to cope with any increase in road traffic. The village also currently does not have any local amenities and therefore this must be fully recognised by the council and taken into due consideration, prior to allowing any increase in housing stock in the village.

To conclude we need to be mindful of what has detrimentally happened and continues to happen to Woolpit and this should not be allowed to happen to Drinkstone. Drinkstone and its villagers have a strong sense of camaraderie and without the appropriate controls in place, which I do not see in the current consultation document, there is a high risk of Drinkstone becoming just another suburb of Bury St Edmunds and I for one, do not want to see this happen.

The constant use of the word "sustainability" is lost in it meaning. It would be more appropriate if you made it clear that the objectives were based on the intended housing development in existing areas where there was already some existing infrastructure. An objective might be better met by identifying an entirely new area for development where planning does not ruin villages. There is a lack of real purpose or intention in the consultation plan behind the areas identified which is solely based on utilising the existing infrastructure and hope for the best. If the real reason for not identifying a new area outside villages is that developers will not bear the infrastructure costs, the you should identify the tactical problems and solve it.

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Happy with it

The focus of the objectives of the Local Plan should not place so much emphasis on supporting the growth of Felixstowe. Employment growth has identified the need for, inter alia, Science Parks within the district. There is nothing within the objectives to support this anticipated growth.

The objectives are acceptable.

There should be a balance between supporting housing growth with maintaining the character of the rural community.

The expansion of economic activity is to be encouraged in that it supports the community with increasing income to the area. Again, there needs to be a balance with the existing residents to avoid adverse impact through increased traffic disturbance and visual impact.

Yes. All are desireable.

It is of crucial importance that the village boundaries are characterized by green fields and development free zones
The design of new housing within the villages and parish should be of a rural design in keeping with the village and its historical past. Modern building techniques may be followed but the finished product should have a village feel.Open plan front gardens with car parking in ratio to house size.
Parking spaces must use permeable surfaces to allow for rain water absorption and should be designed to maintain the rural character of the village

I agree with the objectives re balancing housing with employment needs but it is not clear how far this involves driving empyment and industrial development. I think the objective needs to make this clearer and that development - industrial and housing should be expansion of existing areas optimising sustainability and rural development should be small scale and not drive further housing need.

Development should avoid all the environmental priorities as well as on flood plains

The Housing Objective should give a clearer definition of 'right type' of homes. Social housing and affordable homes are needed, and the balance should be weighted against a majority of executive homes. Whilst this may attract populations into Babergh, there is significant supply of these already and this is not an urgent housing need for the current population.

The Environmental Objective seeks to protect the environmental assets, landscape and green spaces, but the rest of the plan entails the destruction of these. Whilst houses do need to be built, the objective could define how landscapes can be protected and emphasise the contribution of landscape to the wellbeing of the population. The plan could helpfully highlight brownfield site opportunities.

It is important for housing and employment opportunities to be delivered whilst retaining the character of the area which is essentially rural

The local environment must be protected, we need to ensure we all have good quality air to breath, new developments should not be built on or near flood plains.

We agree.

I would agree that all the objectives stated need to be considered.

Yes.

Agree with the objectives however understanding that they terms are very general

The housing objective is weak we need to firm up what is meant by right place and meeting need. How are right places identified and what need is being met? How local is local need, or is this District or County need?

"To seek to maintain a sustainable balance between housing and employment opportunities" Suggest including the needs of the existing local communities in this objective.

Yes

We generally agree with the objectives in principle. Industrial development should centre around the main areas of population so that rural areas can be conserved for the benefit of all.

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I mainly agree, but I feel the development of industrial areas must be carefully considered so as not to impact on residential life.

Cockfield Parish Council agrees with the objectives.

1.Main issues concern infrastructure, radical improvement needed for already strained local road network, delivery of a much needed new school and medical facilities.
2. Homes that are affordable and provision made for aging local population
3. There is great risk to our small village being swamped and lost in several large developments
4. Priority should be to spread more evenly the development across Babergh rather than a few large sites.