Wiltshire Council chief warns of further mass house building in Amesbury

Richard Clewer said in the summer that the Government’s draft National Planning Policy Framework, which increases Wiltshire’s new house building target by 81%, leaves the door wide open for landowners whose sites have not been allocated for development in the current draft plan to resubmit their proposals.

“When we redo the [next] local plan, we will have to account for the uplift … and this will inevitably see significantly more housing sites brought into a future iteration of the proposed local plan,” he said. This could include those left out of the current draft local plan.

He said the country needs to retain its productive farmland and that building on green fields without providing adequate infrastructure such as footpaths and cycle paths, doctors’ surgeries and pharmacies has to stop.

Wiltshire Council recently rejected landowners’ proposals to include in its current Draft Local Plan more than 680 acres of farmland largely for house building at Viney’s Farm next to Amesbury and at High Post. The rejection came after locals put forward strong arguments against the proposals. These included ecological and demographic concerns as well as the fact that existing infrastructure is stretched to breaking point.

Sophy Buckley, an Amesbury resident, said: “Wiltshire Council will have to start drafting its next Local Plan as soon as the current one is adopted. The big worry is that greedy landowners will try once again to get land included that is clearly unsuitable for large numbers of houses. We won the arguments before, and they remain equally valid going forward. Independent reports show that we don’t need these houses here and that building on these sites would decimate the habitats of protected and rare animals and increase flood risks. Nothing has changed but we may have to fight all over again.”

Sustainable Amesbury understands the current Draft Plan continues to leave out the controversial developments in the areas around Amesbury. It will be submitted in the fourth quarter of 2024 to the Secretary of State following which there will be an Examination and Inspector’s Report in 2025. The final stage, adoption, is expected by Wiltshire Council to be in the third quarter of 2025. As soon as it is adopted, the Council will have to start work on the next plan, taking into account increased housing numbers, and will have five years to complete it.

Chilmark Consulting, advisers to the Sustainable Amesbury campaign, have written a summary of the NPPF and Local Plan processes which can be seen here.