Draft Bradford District Local Plan - Preferred Options (Regulation 18) February 2021

Support

Representation ID: 2616

Received: 20/03/2021

Respondent: NEAT

15 years is a long enough period to introduce some genuinely strategic approaches.
At present the approach is mainly reactive (e.g. responding to demand for housing) without any apparent attempt to alter trends that could render Bradford a truly appalling place to live (does the council carry on feeding demand for housing until we have a Hong Kong-style city full of skyscrapers?).
15 years is enough to introduce 2 strategies:
1) Make clear the consequences of population growth and encourage families of 1/2 children maximum;
2) Tackle mental health issues (described by a psychotherapist as "of epidemic proportions). The Council must familiarise itself with research evidence for the benefits of contact with the natural environment (ecotherapy). MIND (the mental health charity) and Dr. Jo Barton (Essex University) are good starting points. To provide ecotherapy for all, surviving green spaces must be preserved and expanded. This would halt declining biodiversity.

Object

Representation ID: 2618

Received: 20/03/2021

Respondent: NEAT

SP1 does not stop habitat destruction, and does nothing to ensure that views of local residents are considered and honoured. "Streamlined and redesigned" suggest quite the opposite.
It would be easier to believe that "sustainable development" does not imply "environmental destruction" if there was a clear focus on redeveloping the large number of form industrial and commercial sites.
Impact assesments have either not been caried out or have been completely ineffective. For example, the Boar's Well area (bounded by Biolton Road, King's Road and Queen's Road) was a haven for a variety of wildlife until 2012, when 48 houses were built on the green field opposite Peel Park. Since then, kestrels, jays and pheasants have not been seen. Bizarrely, those houses could have been built on the site of the former Wapping School, just down the road, which remains, nine years later, a gutted ruin.

Support

Representation ID: 3461

Received: 22/03/2021

Respondent: NEAT

It is significant that the first point ("transform...") does not mention health, which is relegated to paragraph 12 with a reference to healthy places (not people?). Given the poor health in Bradford, assessment of health impacts (physical and mental) of every planning proposal should be front and centre of this policy.
If health inequalities are to be reduced, urban dwellers must not be saddled with the negative impacts of loss of surviving open space.

Object

Representation ID: 3483

Received: 22/03/2021

Respondent: NEAT

There should be no question of using "green belt" or "greenfield" sites for more building, especially within the city of Bradford.
Open space has vale for health, both physical and mental.
Open space encourages biodiversity, often in modest, unseen ways, such as encouraging insects and other invertebrates, which in turn support other wildlife.
Open space reduces flood risk by allowing areas for rainwater to soak into the earth.
This question and answer needs to be seen in the context of the inequality encased in SP3/Question 4, whereby the population of Bradford city is targeted for most of the building development.
The only priority for development sites should be the vast number of disused/under-used/derelict buildings in the city. Travellers arriving at Forster Square station used to get off the train to be welcomed by a burnt-out warehouse. That particular eyesore has gone but many more remain (Listerhills Road, Wapping School).

Object

Representation ID: 3506

Received: 22/03/2021

Respondent: NEAT

The term "Green Belt" does not appear to include all open/green spaces, yet many such spaces are important, especially for urban dwellers who are largely surrounded by brick, stone or concrete. For example, Bolton Road was once a "green corridor", yet 48 houses were built on an adjacent green field, damaging the local biodiversity and removing one of the few remaining vistas.
There is a blurring betwen the need for "housing" and "accommodation", and a lack of convincing evidence that Bradford really needs 22,000 new houses. These figures seem to be influenced by a government that is in cahoots with house-building companies. There is plenty of scope for converting former commercial premises into apartments; and there is a need to warn that population growth cannot continue unchecked without serious and irreversible environmental damage. Bradford is full: If not now, when?

Support

Representation ID: 3530

Received: 22/03/2021

Respondent: NEAT

Good as far as it goes - but where is any mention of freelance work?
The pandemic has highighted the precarious nature of freelance work, which was already a high-risk option.
Many people who are not in work have skills that could be put to use, but reliance on other people/firms creating a job does not always work.
For example, a deaf young adult has a real talent for making greetings cards, but she cannot start trading without insurance, and looking after tax affairs is a step too far for many people, not least those whose first language is not English (hers is BSL).
Another young adult, with an anxiety disorder, wanted to start in business but faced losing all benefits if ilness struck.
Bradford could be a national leader in enabling people to earn from heir skills whilst still having a safety net.

Object

Representation ID: 3557

Received: 22/03/2021

Respondent: NEAT

Housing Need and Requirement

This policy is allowing housing growth to continue unchecked.
What will be the consequences of this? Bradford will become even more densely built on, with associated deterioration in mental and physical health. People from other areas that have not chosen not to build more houses at whatever cost (e.g. Lakes District, West Dorset, Surrey) will gravitate to areas such as Bradford, thus feeding the demand rather than reducing it. Eventually, there will be an even more marked social segregation, with the poor in urban ghettoes whilst the affluent can afford to live in areas where green/open space has been protected.

Key amendment: Change the word housing" to accommodation.
Don't even think about building on open space until every disused/under-used commercial property has been renovated for accommodation.

Support

Representation ID: 3560

Received: 22/03/2021

Respondent: NEAT

Overall, good.
However, you don't reduce flood risk by allowing open spaces to be built on instead of remaining as soakaways.
Encouraging walking sounds great, but it would help to have more footpaths through green spaces, such as Boar's Well or Judy Woods.
The practice of closing some paths (such as that from Boar's Well to Queen's Road) does nothing to encourage walking.

Support

Representation ID: 3563

Received: 22/03/2021

Respondent: NEAT

This sounds very good - but it appears to be undermined in practice.
For example, Bolton Road, from the junction with Shipley Airedale Road to Peel Park, had been a green corridor, with bats, owls, pheasant, jays, a pair of kestrels an even a grouse once evident. Most of these have disppeared since the loss of the meadow on the north-west side of Bolton Road in 2012. Now there is a "for sale" sign on the vegetated verge of the road.
It would be useful to add to this policy a reqirement fo an annual audit of biodiversity in the Bradford district, ward by ward, so that every can see which species are becoming extinct locally owng to planning decisions.

Support

Representation ID: 3573

Received: 22/03/2021

Respondent: NEAT

This sounds good - but appars to be undermined by both contradictory polices (above) and by practice.
To promote wellbeing, contact with green space must be preserved. Refer to the growing body of research evidence (q.v. MIND, Dr. Jo Barton of Essex University inter al.) that shows the mental health benefits of contact with nature (ecotherapy). For some Bradford people, their only regular contact with nature is what is referred to in this document as "under-utilised land"; yet if it hosts wild flowers, it will host insects; and of it hosts inscts, it will host birds; and all of these can make a powerful benefit fo anxiety, depression and low-self-esteem.
The French are proposing to introduce a law making destruction of the natural environment a crime. A great idea.