Hello all,
A few months ago, I read an article in the National Allotment Association magazine where Bath and Northeast Somerset Council had designated nearly all of its allotment sites as Local Green Space. I thought this could be a good option for our Hall Road site, so I’m intending to submit an application for the site to be designated, giving it added protection from being built upon. Read the article here.
In 1983, Bovis applied for planning permission to build houses on the site. The plot holders, Leckhampton Parish Council, and Cheltenham and District Allotment Holders’ Association objected, and the application was rejected by Cheltenham Borough Council. Recently, two employees of Redrow were seen walking around the site with a clipboard. Local Green Space desgination with give the site the equivalent protection to being in a Green Belt.
What is a Local Green Space desgination?
See The Open Spaces Socieity’s FAQs for LGS and LGS process for Cheltenham.
The application needs to be made to Cheltenham Borough Council before the end of September, but I will shortly be emailing it to Martin Horwood/Leckhampton Parish Council as we need their support.
You can see what I’ve added to the form here – please speak up if you think it can be improved. The headings in red are yet to be completed.
Below, I’ve added some background information to hopefully give you a better understanding.
If you have any queries or comments, either put something in the Hall Rd WhatsApp group chat or email me at .
Phil
Plot 33b and C&DAHA committee member
Cheltenham Borough Council correspondence
From the The Planning Policy Officer for Cheltenham Borough Council, Javier Guerrero:
As of current timescales for our emerging plan, the deadline for LGS applications is September this year. That will give the Council time to assess the received submissions before progressing into Regulation 19.
I recently created this webpage about the LGS process for Cheltenham. To summarise, we are currently receiving applications that need to answer:
1. Why should the site be designated as a LGS, therefore explaining its planning history, size, the need for and LGS, and its proximity to the community.
2. Why it is special to the community, therefore detailing its special features, such as beauty, historic significance, recreational value, richness of wildlife, or any other reasons, and most importantly, the evidence supporting these.
You can submit a site by using this form.
A site will be assessed on these criteria as part of the plan making process of our emerging Strategic and Local Plan (see timescales), and any decision on LGS designations will only be confirmed once this process has been finalised (2027 at the earliest). This will include consideration of any LGS designations through the independent examination process, which will be overseen by the Planning Inspectorate.
Leckhampton Parish Council correspondence
From Martin Horwood, Parish councillor for Leckhampton:
Local Green Spaces are designated during the considered plan-making process (an antidote to supposed ‘NIMBYs’ leaping to protect anywhere that happened to get a planning application). The designation is designed to protect otherwise unprotected areas like Leckhampton’s green fields which are close to the population they serve, demonstrably valuable to the local population (for recreation, biodiversity, tranquility etc) and not ‘extensive’ in size. These criteria are set out in the National Planning Policy Framework (constantly being revised by government) and will be the way the principal local councils judge whether to include somewhere as protected LGS in the next local plan (the so-called Strategic & Local Plan being shared between Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury). Anyone can suggest this using the application form online (https://www.cheltenham.gov.uk/info/12/planning_and_development/1877/local_green_space ) by the 30 September deadline.
The parish council could also do this. By copy of this email I’ll suggest to the clerk we add it to a parish council agenda well before September. There is at least one other candidate area at Southcourt Green off Leckhampton Road and possibly more.
Allotments haven’t been included in LGS designations so far here probably because they’re already protected by Policy C13 of the current Cheltenham Plan which basically says they can’t be developed unless the site in question isn’t included in the Cheltenham allotment strategy (Hall Road is) or doesn’t provide a ‘significant or environmental contribution to the town’ or a suitable compensatory site is provided nearby ( https://www.cheltenham.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/8169/cheltenham_plan.pdf).
So it would be quite a struggle to build on them already but with a government that has raised Cheltenham’s housing targets to the point where it once again can’t demonstrate a five year supply of land for housing, neither LGS nor the allotments policy offer absolute protection.
As a first step, it might be helpful for yourself and anyone else you know is concerned to take a look at the application form and perhaps have a first stab at completing it.
Various links
Leckhampton Allotments, Localism Act 2011
Cheltenham Plan, 2020
Examples of other applications
Leckhampton Fields
Blacksmith Lane Allotments, Prestbury
All Saints Allotments