No room to grow

Facilities and services in Southwell would not cope with a large housing development, it is feared.

A survey conducted by Southwell Town Council this week found roads, drains, schools and employment would not meet the demands of more large-scale housing projects.

The chairman of the council’s planning committee, Mr Brendan Haigh, said: “In every regard Southwell is completely inefficient, in particular with regard to foul water drainage, surface water drainage, places in schools, congested streets, inadequate parking facilities and lack of job opportunities.

“I think the town needs to be on guard so that we are not confronted with development that either changes the town or is not suitable because the infrastructure is inadequate.”

The town council was asked to complete an infrastructure survey by Newark and Sherwood District Council, which is trying to identify sites for 17,800 new homes.

The report will be used to judge if Southwell is suitable for future development.

According to the district council’s Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment, there are 19 potential sites for 1,900 houses in and around Southwell.

At a meeting in August the town council objected to all but one of the 19, including a 44-hectare site at Brackenhurst that could accomodate 1,300 homes.

Mr Haigh said because Southwell was a historic town, its infrastructure could not cope with large modern developments.

“There are already pressures on some services, in particular flood water and surface drainage, which is a continuing problem when there is heavy rainfall,” he said.

“The streets in the town obviously were built in a different age and they basically follow a medieval street plan.

“In the town centre the streets are extremely narrow and that must also be a constraint on traffic and on carparking and causes problems with loading and unloading.”

Mr Haigh said there were few employment options for young people moving to the town.

He said: “We have a lot of jobs in the service industry but there are very few point of entry jobs for young people and no real career-type jobs.

“People will have to travel out of town and that isn’t good environmentally.”

Mr Haigh said he felt that any large development would affect the character of the town.

He said: “The town sits very well in its rural setting and if there were to be any real growth in the town it will spoil its historic character.”

The chairman of the town council’s highways committee, Mrs Beryl Prentice, said most of the traffic problems were on Church Street, Queen Street and King Street, which were not designed to cope with large volumes of traffic.

She said: “Church Street is the prime one because that’s absolutely dreadful from the point of view of traffic. There is a very narrow stretch by the Bramley Apple pub and it is often very difficult in the mornings and the evenings.

“If there was more housing there would be more vehicles using the roads and I dread to think what would happen.

“The idea is they increase housing in sustainable areas where people won’t have to get in their cars and go to work because they can get jobs in local industries, which we don’t have here.”