Helpston Parish Council
Peterborough Local Plan
The current Peterborough Local Plan
was adopted on 24th July 2019 by Peterborough City Council after the Examination Process conducted by the Government appointed Inspector (Louise Crosby) during the Stage 1 and Stage 2 process stages of the local hearings concluding in October/November 2018.
The aim of the Plan was to make provision for the housing, infrastructure and other growth targets and needs of Peterborough for the period 2016 to 2036.
As publicised previously on our web site, Helpston Parish Council made known its objections to the Plan both to the City Council and to the Inspector. The Chairman and Clerk attended in person the hearings and spoke against the development of land off West Street and Broadwheel Road, known as site LP41.5 and showing an "indicative" number of 82 new houses. Unfortunately, despite 41 other known parishioner objections to this site, there were NO other representatives from the parish present in person at the hearing (which had been well publicised) to sit beside the representatives from Helpston Parish Council.
Historically, to begin their new Plan, Peterborough City Council had firstly invited landowners to suggest and offer land for development. In Helpston’s case, several landowners originally offered up SEVEN different sites. Your Parish Council objected to them all, but eventually the City Council chose just the one site for inclusion in the Plan for new housing.
In later iterations of the Plan landowners offered ONE further site and the City chose to incorporate a part of it alongside the original chosen site into the new Plan.
The site is numbered LP41.5 in the submission plan and involves a major change to the Village Envelope. It stretches between Broadwheel Road and West Street and is now incorporated in the Local Plan and in the new "Village Envelope"
As an example of Policy matters, there has been much discussion about the “categorisation” of the Villages.
Helpston is known in the “Settlement Hierarchy” as a Medium Village because it has a School and a Shop, whereas many villages, without even these limited facilities are described as “Small Villages” and attract no development at all. Villages like Eye and Thorney with more facilities are classed as “Large Villages” and get allocated huge numbers of new houses. And Wansford, by comparison, which has lots of shops and other facilities has been designated as a Small Village just because it has no school!
Helpston Parish Council Chairman Councillor Joseph Dobson and I have argued that an “82 house allocation” for Helpston is far too high for a Medium Village and have made comparisons with the other medium villages (Barnack, Castor, Ailsworth , Glinton, Newborough, Northborough) none of which have been allocated anywhere near that number.
But the City has argued that because two landowners in Helpston have freely offered such a large combined site, then 82 houses is the appropriate "indicative" number for that site and this has become our allocation. We have argued that our Village facilities are already overstretched, e.g. the School, and our infrastructure cannot support this level of development.
And so on….
DESPITE ALL THIS THE LOCAL PLAN WAS ADOPTED and Helpston Parish Council will face and have to deal with all the Outline and Detail Planning Applications from potential developers of the site. Neither of the two parts of the allocated area LP41.5 have been sold to date but initial planning applications for the area have been submitted.
You can view the adopted Local Plan on the City Council's website under Peterborough City Council Local Plan
Written by: Syd Smith, Clerk to Helpston Parish Council
