5,000 signatures reached
To: Wiltshire Council
Stop Urban Sprawl and Destruction of Wiltshire Countryside
Stop 7,500 houses and £75 million- worth of roads being built on open landscape in the Marden and Avon river valleys.
Why is this important?
Wiltshire Council plan to build 7,500 new houses (with 10,000 plus additional vehicles) and a large distributer road on unspoilt, ecologically significant parts of North Wiltshire.
This will:
- Turn Chippenham into an even bigger commuter town, with even more congestion;
- Worsen already poor air quality in and around Calne and Chippenham;
- Massively increase greenhouse gas emissions as a result of the additional traffic;
- Have an adverse impact on the health and premature deaths as a result of air pollution;
- Increase flood risk in downstream Chippenham and beyond;
- Destroy the wildlife corridor and biodiversity along the River Avon and Marden valleys;
- Destroy good quality farmland needed to stop our reliance on other countries for food supply, including the loss of county farms;
- Destroy valuable, unspoiled river landscapes and their public amenity value.
Given the declared Global Climate Emergency, it is astonishing that the Council would even consider building on land that is so vital to our future and that would undermine the battle against climate change. In fact, we believe that in the midst of a global Climate Emergency, unsustainable development of this kind should not be permitted.
It seems clear to us that this scheme has been devised by Wiltshire Council purely in the interests of meeting housing targets and is being imposed on the residents of Chippenham, Calne and its surrounding villages outside of democratic process and WITHOUT public support.
Chippenham residents share our concerns about the green spaces around their town. In a survey conducted for the Neighbourhood Plan in 2019 declared ‘over-development’ and ‘urban sprawl’ declared one of the top - three issues in a long list of concerns.
This Housing Infrastructure Fund application and associated road and 7,500 houses, is also in direct conflict with the existing Chippenham Site Allocations Plan (part of the Local Plan) and is an attempt to predetermine the outcome of the Local Plan Review, which had been working up proposals for much smaller expansion of the town.
We are therefore asking the 38 degrees community to help us stop this destruction of North Wiltshire’s beautiful river valleys and unspoilt countryside, and create havoc on our roads and let Wiltshire Council know that we will not let them get away with it.
This will:
- Turn Chippenham into an even bigger commuter town, with even more congestion;
- Worsen already poor air quality in and around Calne and Chippenham;
- Massively increase greenhouse gas emissions as a result of the additional traffic;
- Have an adverse impact on the health and premature deaths as a result of air pollution;
- Increase flood risk in downstream Chippenham and beyond;
- Destroy the wildlife corridor and biodiversity along the River Avon and Marden valleys;
- Destroy good quality farmland needed to stop our reliance on other countries for food supply, including the loss of county farms;
- Destroy valuable, unspoiled river landscapes and their public amenity value.
Given the declared Global Climate Emergency, it is astonishing that the Council would even consider building on land that is so vital to our future and that would undermine the battle against climate change. In fact, we believe that in the midst of a global Climate Emergency, unsustainable development of this kind should not be permitted.
It seems clear to us that this scheme has been devised by Wiltshire Council purely in the interests of meeting housing targets and is being imposed on the residents of Chippenham, Calne and its surrounding villages outside of democratic process and WITHOUT public support.
Chippenham residents share our concerns about the green spaces around their town. In a survey conducted for the Neighbourhood Plan in 2019 declared ‘over-development’ and ‘urban sprawl’ declared one of the top - three issues in a long list of concerns.
This Housing Infrastructure Fund application and associated road and 7,500 houses, is also in direct conflict with the existing Chippenham Site Allocations Plan (part of the Local Plan) and is an attempt to predetermine the outcome of the Local Plan Review, which had been working up proposals for much smaller expansion of the town.
We are therefore asking the 38 degrees community to help us stop this destruction of North Wiltshire’s beautiful river valleys and unspoilt countryside, and create havoc on our roads and let Wiltshire Council know that we will not let them get away with it.
