Griston Parish council

BRECKLAND DRAFT LOCAL PLAN – REGULATION 18 CONSULTATION

Breckland Local Plan Consultation

This is the dry, boring bit of Parish Council business; poring over huge official documents trying to work out what they really mean to us and their possible effect on the village. But this is important stuff that everyone should be aware of now so they can comment and don’t realise too late that they’re affected and then have nowhere to complain.

The outcome of the recent call for sites by Breckland District Council identified five potential development locations (including one on the other side of the airfield) that were within the Griston Parish boundary. The Parish Council assessed them from the village’s point of view and placed them in a preferred order for submission to Breckland. On the face of it, it does look like those preferences were ignored.
 
Breckland District Council has now assessed all the nominated sites across their region, issued their draft Local Plan and moved to the Regulation 18 consultation, which is now open and runs until 15 December. It gives everyone the opportunity to comment and raise concerns over the proposals, particularly with regard to the planning locations. The draft plan can be found here

Regulation 18 Local Plan Consultation 2025 – Breckland Council

It is over 600 pages long,  but the map that refers to Griston can be found on Page 456.

Griston is one of 19 ‘secondary parishes’, which between them are scheduled to account for 5% of the Breckland area new housing development.
 
The total number of new dwellings anticipated in Griston (including any already permitted) between now and 2042 is 57. This again omits, in error, the site proposed as an addition to the Griston North area, as Breckland misread this in their initial parish allocation, and it looks like it would add another 70-ish houses to Griston North, adjacent to Carbrooke.
 
The Breckland calculation is simply for the Quantrill site (37 houses, already holding planning permission) and a further 20 on the Caston Road plot behind the Waggon & Horses.
 
In crude arithmetic terms, this averages out to three new houses per year, but we know that Norfolk Land Development is struggling to get interest in the terrace of new housing in Church Road and this is impacting their business decisions about starting the rest of the development. Breckland’s own projections are that this site will only see houses built between 2032/36; that lags behind the Caston Road site, where they project the whole twenty not being built until 2029-31. The Parish Council intends to apply whatever pressure it can to get the Quantrill site moving as soon as possible as we regard another ten years of non-progress on this abandoned industrial site as unacceptable.
 
Parish Councillors have queried in face-to-face discussions with Breckland’s Officers why only a single site from the four identified by us in the Call For Sites (and the one least preferred by us) made it to the draft Local Plan. Their response was that they had been oversubscribed with sites (even taking into account the increased Westminster target), and so had focussed only on the bigger sites in the draft plan.
 
We were assured that doesn’t mean that any other or smaller sites won’t be considered or looked at, just that for the Local Plan they’d taken the decision (largely driven by a short timeframe) to gain maximum numbers from the smallest number of sites.
 
The eagle-eyed among you will also spot that Griston is the only Breckland village identified as a ‘pocket of deprivation’, noting ‘these higher rates of multiple deprivation are based on levels of income, employment, education and crime’. We believe this classification is not a true reflection on the village, but may be a statistical result of HMP Wayland’s residents making us look like a high crime area. As this factor may also enable the parish council to attract additional grant funding, it could actually bring a positive effect. As they say ‘there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

We have also managed to get Griston recognised as a village with significant flood risk by the Lead Local Flood Authority, and all new developments in the village will have to take this into account.
 
Your Parish Council urges all parishioners to make their voices on the draft Local Plan Regulation 18 consultation heard by commenting using the link above and raise any concerns they might have: Comments must be made in writing and can be submitted as follows:
 

 
There is also one remaining drop-in event where the Draft Plan can be seen and where Council Officers will be available to explain it and discuss matters. This is at Watton Library, on Wednesday 19 November between 12:00 – 15:00.
 
Finally, if you know friends or neighbours that might be interested and wish to comment – and are not active online – please make them aware.

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