Land at Badshot Lea

Project type:	New Neighbourhood
Location:	Badshot Lea, UK
Client:	Rowen Properties (London) Ltd
Stage:	Community Planning
Programme:	2016

Around 200 members of the Badshot Lea community were engaged before and during the Land at Badshot Lea Community Planning Weekend, held on Saturday 14 and Saturday 15 October at St George’s Church.

The aim of the Weekend, facilitated by JTP on behalf of a consortium of local landowners, was to create a Vision for a sustainable new neighbourhood on the land south of the village. In addition, former quarry land south of the Guildford Road is proposed for natural recreational space known as SANG (Suitable Accessible Natural Greenspace).

It was clear during the process that some members of the community see the advantages of developing the site and the community benefits it could deliver, whilst others do not support the principle of development. Outcomes from the co-design process included:

the desire to protect the character of Badshot Lea
the need to provide truly affordable and energy efficient homes including custom build and self build in the new neighbourhood built on garden village principles and incorporating a Community Land Trust (CLT)
the need to improve transport, services and community infrastructure locally as new development is built
the need to create traffic calming
the need to contribute to solving the shortage of school places
a desire to focus on creating a strong and balanced community within a new sociable and active neighbourhood, whilst helping the young in particular to get the homes that they need and want on a buy, build or rent basis that they can afford.

Another key aspiration was to include a network of new bridleways through the neighbourhood for walking, cycling and horse-riding, with a new bridge over the A31 linking to the new SANG and on to Farnham station.

Illustrative masterplan presented at Report Back Presentation, 18 October 2016

Following the public workshops the JTP team analysed and summarised the outcomes and drew up an illustrated Vision for the sites which was reported back to the local community on Tuesday 18 October.

The design team will now move forward to prepare an outline planning application for the site, for submission to Waverley Borough Council in 2017.

“

We are delighted with the results of the community participation process and the feedback obtained. This is always such an enriching and exciting exercise, which we believe is so important in creating genuinely sustainable communities. We look forward to building on the relationship with the community with a further event in January 2017 where we will further refine the masterplan and vision; one of the key aspects of which will be our custom and self build proposals for young and entrepreneurially minded people.

Pete Halsall, sustainable developer

Background

The Borough Council needs to provide nearly 10,000 new homes over the next 16 years. The consortium believes that the draft Local Plan will, as it stands, not adequately address the objectively assessed housing requirement. As such, the emerging Local Plan will result in an under supply of housing and the land south of Badshot Lea, which is sustainable, available and deliverable, will help meet that shortfall and provide a wide range of high quality and much needed new homes with other community benefits.