Transport Technical Paper [EXAM 114]

Re: Removal Policy SE2 M1 Junction 13 Marston Gate Expansion from the Central Bedfordshire Local Plan

I am writing to request the removal of Policy SE2: M1 Junction 13 Marston Gate Expansion from the Central Bedfordshire Local Plan and for development to be kept west of the Bletchley-Bedford railway line, which will protect the Greensand Ridge and protect designated heritage assets.
My reasons are as follows:
• The 2005 Mid Bedfordshire Local Plan designated the land east of the railway as an ‘area of great landscape value’
• Central Bedfordshire Council’s 2016 Landscape Character Assessment states the need to ‘safeguard open land at the foot of the ridge to provide for the setting of the ridge and the associated villages’
• Central Bedfordshire Council’s 2017 Employment Site Assessment states that it is ‘important to retain development west of the railway and not allow spread into open countryside’
• In 2007 Bedfordshire County Council’s Landscape Sensitivity Study concluded that ‘this area itself is very sensitive as the setting to the Greensand Ridge’
• The Inspectors charged with examining the Local Plan highlight in their September 2019 letter that ‘Policy SE2 is not justified due to the harm that would be caused to the landscape character of the area’
• M1 Junction 13 is defined as a ‘hotspot’, currently Highways England and Central Bedfordshire have yet to produce modelling or potential solutions to address this ‘hotspot’
• Congestion on A507 the Marston Gate, allocation site would be accessed from the A507 a key east-west route across the district
• The council already expects the A507 to experience high levels of congestion, however no modelling or potential solutions have been devised to address them
• This is also an allocation which the council does not need to make, in other words there is no need expressed in planning policy for this allocation, it is therefore not required economically or for reasons for economic growth. The council’s Functional Economic Marketing Assessment and Local Employment Land Review reports show there is currently an over supply of employment land and alternative brownfield sites available