There was a meeting of the Parish Council (PC) on 5 October 2021, which was attended by the applicant's agent, and a number of interested parties from the village.

 

Following the agent's summary of what the applicant's plans are for the site, and an open forum of questions to the agent, the Parish Council voted whether to support the application.

 

Despite concerns being voiced by the Chairman of the PC, the vote was 3:2 in support. The proviso was that the PC would ask SDC to agree a detailed s106 Agreement with the eventual developer of the land if full planning permission is subsequently obtained, setting out requirements for the infrastructure of the village hall and timescales for its delivery. They agreed that it was important, and in fact essential,  that the proposed "community infrastructure" parts of this proposed development, i.e. village hall, play area, be delivered before the market value homes.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE: The applicant's agent was asked to confirm if the applicant had any intention of building this development himself or if this outline application was being made with a view to Mr Bradford selling the land to a developer. This will also increase value of the land surrounding the village.

 

IT WAS CONFIRMED THAT MR BRADFORD'S AIM WAS TO OBTAIN OUTLINE PLANNING PERMISSION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT SO THAT HE COULD SELL THE LAND TO A DEVELOPER.

 

This confirmed our suspicion that this application was being made solely to increase the value of the land so it can be sold.

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When asked by villagers at the Parish council meeting on 5.10.21 if this proposal will deliberately go against the EA policy and guidance landowner’s agent said ‘yes’. As such, applicant is presumably going to try to force a change of floodplain status with an outline plaining submission alone.

 

In our opinion, there is a high risk that a developer would wish to develop the entire plot and deliver far in excess of the 10 houses in this application.

 

There is also the very real possibility, if, as appears to be the case, the village, through the PC, agrees that the village boundary should be broken to allow this development to go ahead, that owners of other plots of greenfield and agricultural land surrounding the village, will make similar applications and that further housing developments will result anywhere outside of the village. 

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The floodgates are likely to open fairly soon if we, as a village, support this application. We wish Bawdrip to remain as a rural village, rather than a suburb of Bridgwater, Puriton and Woolavington. The Gravity site (rumoured gigafactory) will employ over 5000 new employees, many of whom will need new local housing.  Unfortunately the Parish council has now agreed to support a proposal for the village to expand outside of its Boundaries.  Watch this space...

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UPDATE - 24.9.21

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It has been revealed that Rivian (an Amazon backed van and Car Company with a 1.8b investment) had identified Gravity, a 616-acre campus near Bawdrip, as a potential site for a new manufacturing plant. The new site is likely to benefit from a substantial state support package. The entire site is now(10.11.21) in the planning Consultation stage on the planning site for a local development order, application number: 95/21/00001.

Update 6.11.23. Plans to build an electric vehicle battery factory or "gigafactory" are yet to materialise. In July, news broke that Tata Motors, owners of Jaguar Land Rover, was hoping to build a £4bn electric vehicle battery plant on the 616-acre "smart campus". A business park cannot be connected to the national rail network until a new factory can be built and occupied. The Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) estimated in October 2021 that it will cost £50M to “restore the rail link to the site for passenger and freight services” – a sum which may have increased drastically since then due to high inflation and supply chain issues within the construction sector.

 

This would mean a gigantic £1bn electric car battery gigafactory, with an electric vehicle 1.5 miles from the rural village of Bawdrip. The site could generate "upwards of 5,000 jobs." on top of the 7.500 new jobs from the gravity site alone, Most of these workers will have to live somewhere nearby.

 

Do we wish to build outside of the village? Agreeing that we want a "free" hall with the addition of 10 houses now sends the signal out to the planning authority, local and national government and developers that other areas of green field land outside the village boundary are ripe for development to cater for all the additional housing that is bound to be required to support the 5000 or more new jobs created if Rivian does move to the Gravity site. Do we really want Bawdrip to amalgamate with Bridgwater, Puriton and Woolavington to become one large town? Surely that isn't the reason most of us chose village life. We need to be very careful what we wish for. 

 

But we are fortunate to live in a Tier 4 rural community that had a long standing settlement boundary, thus affording us the security that our homes will not be swallowed up by the sort of development we are seeing in surrounding local villages. At the moment nothing can be forced upon us. We have a say in what happens within the village via the Parish Council and years old local democracy. This time it is different, planning laws are changing and new legislation has made it easier for houses to be built in unsustainable areas that may not have previously been accessible to developers.

 

The current proposal from the Government is for councils to be asked to draw up multi-year plans dividing land into zones for development and protection, rather than individual planning applications being decided through a democratic process.  Outline approval would be automatic in growth zones and there would be a statutory presumption in favour of development in renewal zones. 

 

We must therefore now decide if the village expands into open countryside, and land around it zoned for future developments. The question is, do we want protection or development zones for the land around the village?  

 

An outline application has been submitted to build a village Hall,10 market value houses (i.e. not even affordable housing), a children’s play area and large unsecured car park. The question is, do we want to break the centuries old boundary? Can we, as villagers, be swayed by the promise of a spanking new village hall, if the downside of that is that our village expands beyond recognition in any direction outside of its boundary?

 

As this is an outline planning application, the applicant does not ever need to build anything on the land and incur the expenses of doing so. What he needs to do is demonstrate to the planning authority that the village wishes to expand. He needs to prove to Sedgemoor District Council (and, it is suggested, other landowners) that the land surrounding the village of Bawdrip is now ripe for development. The value of the land to the applicant increases drastically as soon as planning consent is granted. That is the aim here – nothing more, nothing less.

 

If this planning approach fails and we vote for the new village hall, this will be to the detriment and probable loss of the well loved Parish hall. The current hall suits the village well and remains the church’s preferred option.

 

We as a village have now made it clear that as a community we wish to expand the village into areas that have up until now been out of bounds for developers. Also, The applicant states that there has been no similar application on this 3b floodplain. That is not true.

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The Parish Council is provisionally discussing the planning application at its meeting on October 5th. This will be at 7.30pm in The Parish Hall. Do try and attend this meeting. It is open to the public who can have their say.

 

This type of application has not happened before on this scale. Once that decision has been taken, it will probably happen quite quickly, and we would have set a precedent for future planning applications in or around the village. We have seen this in other villages - Puriton, Woolavington and North Petherton for example. These villages have been at this point in the past - do you take the prize, or do we stand firm, as a community and push back against unsustainable major development in farmland and open countryside surrounding Bawdrip?

 

This is an important moment in Bawdrip’s history and it is up to all of us to decide our village’s future – do we want to be surrounded by open countryside or housing for which there is no identifiable local need?

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