So, I went out for a little walk. Up Entry Hill, through South Stoke, down into Combe Hay (anyone wants to make me a present of the Old Rectory in that village yes please, ooooh, yes, yes, yessssss) and back up through Odd Down.
Which meant that I went past lots of posters demanding “Stop South Stoke Plateau“. A development of some few hundred houses on the southern edge of Bath.
And there’s something really fun about this. Here’s the map of the Green Belt. Yes, South Stoke is inside that Green Belt. As is Combe Hay, Midford, that whole valley. So, obviously, no development there.
So what is being complained about? The “South Stoke Plateau” is actually the arse end of Odd Down. Inside the City boundaries and outside the Green Belt. But they’re whining even about that.
It’s also right by the main road down to Radstock – and, pertinently, to Peasedown St John. Which is just on the other outside of the Green Belt. So that’s where all the south Bath housing has been put these past few decades. Leading, of course, to vast tails of commuters along that 5 mile stretch of road.
They really are complaining about housing being built in just where housing should be, even by current idiotic constraints. Not in the Green Belt, in empty space between the City and the Green Belt. I actually walked through the development yesterday and while not to my taste it’s perfectly acceptable.
And finally, something that Bathonians will grasp. “Save South Stoke” works. “Save Odd Down” doesn’t. Guess which phrase they’ve used for this development wihch is in Odd Down, not South Stoke?