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Report from the Wootton SDA Consortium Exhibition in April 2008
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 The exhibition opened its doors to residents on Thursday evening 17th April 2008 and continued until Sunday 20th April. Northants Residents Alliance were invited to provide a stand at the exhibition by Engage Planning (a firm of consultants who organise public consultations on behalf of property developers). The thinking behind this is to try to embrace residents’ views and allow them access to a group that is ‘on their side’. The show was well attended throughout and the NRA stand was manned continuously with the unstinting support of the Hardingstone Working Group.
After perusing the exhibition boards provided by the Consortium and asking questions of the Developers’ experts, many residents ended up expressing to us on the NRA stand their fears, doubts and even anger over the plans to build over 4,500 houses in the area. Unsurprisingly, the proposals are not welcomed by the great majority of local residents and the following is a list, which attempts to summarise their most frequent concerns and objections:
- Road Congestion - Roads in the area are already badly congested. This expansion will require new roads, not just the promised junction improvements. 4,500 houses will have a noticeable impact on the M1.
- Flood Risk -
 Locals have seen evidence of increased flooding since Grange Park was built. There is a concern that 1 in 200 year protection for the new houses will displace water and threaten existing homes that don’t have such high protection. The general opinion is that the Environment Agency does not help with local flooding issues today and therefore cannot be trusted to ensure the new development is safe.
- Sewerage - Anglian Water have reported in several areas that they don’t have a countywide strategic plan to increase sewerage capacity and therefore cannot sustain the addition of even the 450 homes proposed at Grange Park recently, let alone an extra 4,500.
- Medical Care Stories abounded about how access to medical services in local areas and at the General Hospital were overloaded - this appears to be a worsening situation. Developers’ promises of building new medical centres didn’t seem to provide the guarantee of funded, trained personnel to staff them and most importantly, didn’t include any expansion funding for the Hospital.
- Schools Very emotive. The new school in which the exhibition was held is oversubscribed and many residents’ children are bussed to villages like Roade. The developers promised new primary school buildings, but there were no such promises about the guaranteed provision of new Secondary schools to cope with existing residents and the proposed new population.
- Land Instability A number of residents approached us with stories of landslip in the area, which had caused damage to existing buildings.
Brian Binley MP and Northampton Borough Council leader Tony Woods visited the exhibition. Both men expressed concern over the lack of proper planning and funding for essential infrastructure. Binley said he was “Fed up with Government trying to dump its South East housing problems on Northampton” and “it adds insult to injury that they [the Government] are not providing funding for strategic infrastructure”.
The point that struck us most during the exhibition was the uncertainty amongst developers, opposition groups and politicians alike about how the infrastructure for such a major development could be provided, whilst there is no strategic plan in place for Northampton. Everyone is still waiting for a Local Development Framework to be agreed before such essentials as road and sewerage networks can be planned at a strategic level. This could be between two and three years away - since as far as we are aware there are no serious talks being held between the planning authorities at this time. Provided West Northampton Development Corporation are prevented by our politicians from granting planning permission in advance of having a guaranteed upfront infrastructure, perhaps the Wootton development plan is somewhat premature.
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Don’t Miss the Next Residents Meeting at Hardingstone
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21st May at Hardingstone Village Hall - Starts 7:30 pm
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