New housing has been a source of friction in the local plan for Valley
THE deadline has now passed for comments – and in many cases objections – to the Local Plan for Rossendale, which proposes where various types of developments will be created in coming years.
It’s the second such consultation in three years, after Rossendale council leader Alyson Barnes insisted the authority go back to the drawing board after howls of protest from across the borough to the previous plan.
Not surprisingly, the possible location of new housing has once again been a major source of friction in the new plan, with suggestions in some places that land previously designated as countryside is now being proposed for housing.
Then, of course, there’s the remarkable idea to put 500 homes around the outskirts of Edenfield.
One of the things largely unaddressed by the Local Plan is the impact putting thousands of new homes in the borough will have on school places.
The documents I’ve read seem to suggest that overall in the borough, school places aren’t a problem.
At borough level, that might not be a problem, but there are plenty of hotspots where competition for school places is fierce.
In Edenfield, for example, if 20 per cent of the 500 new homes contain primary schoolaged children, where will they go to school?
The two schools in the area will need to either expand, or those children will have to go to school further away.
The next stage of this process needs to be explained simply, and in plain English.
At the moment, it feels like it is a process which has relied on local people deciphering local government speak to understand what is happening to their area.
For something as important as this, that’s not good enough.