ECO-TOWN DECISION IN TWO WEEKS—OR THE NEW YEAR

Preston Witts
Stratford Herald

This was the message to the Herald from Whitehall this week as Stratford-on-Avon District Council found itself grappling with an entanglement of housing issues—all of them potentially explosive and all of them vital to the future of the district as a whole.

With a decision on the eco-town still pending, the council’s planning committee will on Monday consider an application for a leisure village on a large chunk of the eco-town site. Officials have already recommended that the application—by St Modwen, which is also a co-promoter of the eco-town—should be granted.

The leisure village proposal, which controversially includes 500 permanent homes as well as 150 holiday homes and 150 holiday self-catering lodges, will eventually be withdrawn if the eco-town looks like becoming a reality. Until that point, however, St Modwen is pressing ahead with it as an entirely separate parallel project.

Meanwhile, the district council’s ruling cabinet on Monday decided to keep three key sites in Stratford in what’s known as “strategic reserve”, and therefore not available for development for some years—the most crucial of them the land west of Shottery, which is earmarked for the building of 800 new homes.