Picking up some of the themes Tim Thorogood highlighted in his excellent Opinion Piece of 4 November, Wells and the surrounding communities need to work together to shape future development in our area.
The Wells Neighbourhood Plan this is limited to the area defined by the City boundaries. But the impact of planning and development decisions go wider than this. The parish of St Cuthbert Out which surrounds Wells and others, such as Westbury sub Mendip and Wookey, rely on Wells for shopping, public transport links and secondary education meaning that development in these villages needs to be considered in the context of the impact on the wider Wells region. It is crucial that the various councils work together to produce complementary Neighbourhood Plans but also agree specific priorities that developments must deliver.
The first objective should be the agreement of the wider community to a few specific deliverables that become a pre condition of every planning application coming before the parish councils. To be effective, these priorities need to be a win win for both the community and the developer. This limited series of priorities, if followed and delivered, would allow a simpler passage for a development to take place and would provide some real tangible benefits to the community.
The planning process includes Section 106 payments and Community Infrastructure Levies. Both of these provisions are designed to generate a financial contribution from the developer to offset the impact of new housing on public services. However, developers are adept at negotiating away some of these payments and local government is not good at providing a consistent plan setting the use of these payments, or in some cases, not even collecting the payments from the developers. It is incumbent on the parish councils to agree specific objectives so that the payments are applied to areas that are of value to the community and holding Somerset to account to ensure that the monies are paid and applied accordingly.
Examples of local key priorities might be:
• Upgrading the A371 between Wells and Cheddar or the building of a new link road to the A38 to accommodate increased traffic arising from developments to the west of Wells.
• Provision of more long term public parking in Wells to support tourism and employment.
The establishment of the priorities is not the sole responsibility of the parish councils. Communities need to engage to ensure that the issues that affect them are heard and understood. An example of this might be the poor state of walkways in Wells which cause numerous injuries to users which in turn impacts on the NHS. This is a potential priority for all parishes since all local constituents are affected by this, not simply the inhabitants of Wells. A dialogue needs to exist between communities and councillors so that these issues are seen as something the community as a whole is invested in improving rather than simply seeing it a problem for others to address.
Going forward, the Civic Society will seek to develop a capability which allows priorities to be identified and to support the City Council and those of the surrounding parishes in devising strategies to deliver these priorities.
Chris Charles, Wells Civic Society Member.
This opinion piece is reflects the views of the writer in an individual capacity and does not reflect a policy position of the Wells Civic Society. Members of the Society are encouraged to contribute personal opinion pieces for consideration for publication on the Society’s website or other media.
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