Approval for 1,500 homes must only be a matter of time

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Having driven through Higham recently on the way to the town centre, taking a right turn at the Chestnut Tree pub roundabout, I noticed a large building site which strangely hasn’t been publicised locally by Barnsley Council.

Upon further investigation – for example a walk up and down the street having parked at Aldi – little seems to be there either.

This got my mind thinking... You’d think, given there’s a plan for 1,500 homes making its way through the council’s planning system, they would let residents know about the goings-on there, especially so after the amount of campaigners who’ve fought to stop it from even happening.

Anyone who drives past will see a contractor’s site, which upon further investigation is the start of a new roundabout and a link road. Who told us? Nobody.

I’m not against building homes as they’re definitely needed – especially affordable ones – but this issue stinks and it’s because of what I’ve found out since witnessing the machinery on the site.

If you go on the council’s planning explorer webpage, you’ll see this 1,500-home development is several years in the making and despite it being submitted in 2020, still nothing’s been granted for those homes.

Not one jot of approval.

However, in November of that year, plans for two roundabouts and a link road were approved. Who’s paying for that?

The government, with funds channelled to the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, which made their way to Barnsley Council.

Approving a major road through a giant field, connecting Barugh Green to Higham, which is the subject of plans to build 1,500 homes before that’s even approved is laughable and flies in the face of whatever spiel our cabinet members’ comments say in this newspaper.

Our council’s claimed their ‘transparency’ throughout this process – and elsewhere – yet surely anyone with a slither of common sense would see the issue with this one.

So, in simple terms: plans for

1,500 homes which have been deliberated over for several years without a conclusive decision by our council, followed by developers starting work on a road with two roundabouts at either end of the site.

Done deal? I – and many others – think so.