Campaigners share their fears about 2000 home plans in Colchester
The council says campaigners have raised "valid" concerns
Campaigners have shared their fears over plans for 2000 new homes that could be build on an 800-year-old nature reserve. The campaigners insist building the homes near Bullock Wood and Welshwood Nature Reserve in Colchester, would “devastate” animals.
Colchester City Council is planning the homes as part of its local plan, which sets out development in the area for the next two decades. The worried campaigners told the council’s local plan committee meeting, on Monday (June 29), that the area is a “precious jewel.”
A spokesman for St John’s Residents Association said they fear the “sheer trampling effect” of thousands of new residents. She told the meeting: “Construction on St John’s Field risks altering the delicate water table that has sustained Bullock Wood for centuries. The wood is a relic of Colchester’s natural history that has survived since the last ice age.”
A spokesman for Welsh Wood Park Residents Association, described the area as “a scarce and threatened resource” with “huge importance to wildlife.”
She also told the committee: “There’d be zero cap between Colchester and Tendring if it was built on, a breach of planning law. The proposal to build on the area is borne, I think, out of a desperation to meet an artificial housing target imposed on the council. The devastation of a beautiful and vital landscape for this is wholly unjustified.”
The council has allocated potential locations for more than 20,000 homes to be built by 2041, as part of its local plan. The proposals also include where new roads, schools, businesses and other services will be built. Council documents have shown car parks, a former rugby club site, and land near a train station that could be developed as part of these housing plans.
Sandra Scott, place strategy manager at the council, said the campaigners made some “valid concerns.” She also told the meeting work and evidence will “enable” the council to “properly consider” the approach to this site and the potential development. She also said the council needs to “give due consideration” to the points made by the campaigners.
She said the final proposals “will ensure” the plan “provides appropriate responses, policy, safeguard and protection.” She added that any plans for “irreplaceable” habitats would need to “adequately demonstrate” how the sites can be “safeguarded.”