The Parish Council and Ward Councillors Childs and French have been working together to ensure that the Section 106 Agreement in respect of this proposed development provides the right facilities to mitigate the impact of building of up to 500 new homes on land East of Barton-le-Clay. Today, the attached letter has been sent to Central Beds Council to request they review the draft agreement before it is signed. It has also been copied to our MP, Blake Stephenson, to engage his support.
Dear Central Beds Planning Officers, Chief Executive and Councillors on Central Beds Development Management Committee and anyone else copied in.
Barton-le-clay Parish Council Clerk, Chair of the Parish Council Planning Committee, Councillor Fletcher, together with District Councillors, Anna French and Liz Childs, met with Central Beds Planning Officer in September 2024, regarding the Section 106 funding in respect of the proposed Higham Gobion Road development on land East of Barton-le-Clay.
The Parish Council were not consulted on the Section 106 agreement, which was drafted without their input, until after it was discussed at the Development Management Committee meeting on 6th July 2022, when a resolution was passed to grant Outline Planning. The Section 106 document was only published on the Central Beds Council website in August 2024. We were told at the meeting in September that this agreement has not yet been signed or outline planning permission granted yet.
We believe the basis that the draft agreement was drawn up was flawed at the time and has changed significantly since then; particularly with regard to the traffic management survey which was completed pre-covid in 2019 and before we lost our bank and post office services.
We believe many more people will need to travel through the Village in cars and we particularly want to see road safety measures included in the Section 106 agreement, including the provision of an additional crossing for pedestrians walking to the Village amenities across the busy Bedford Road and traffic calming measures/speed limits, as appropriate.
We also believe the cost of living has gone up significantly since this was first drafted and index linking figures to the date of signing the Section 106 Agreement, without reassessing them before it’s signed, will be detrimental to the village and not meet current costs; Particularly the costs of the new school which we believe may have been underestimated.
Finally, we have pointed out some fundamental errors in the document which means it is legally incorrect. These were first identified in July 2022, when the Parish Council were first provided with a copy of the draft Heads of Terms for the Section 106 agreement. These have still not been corrected, despite assurances they would be in 2022. We feel this illustrates the incompetence of the officers dealing with the case.
We have asked the officer(s) when we met in September, and on numerous occasions since the meeting in September, NOT TO PROCEED with signing of this document or the granting of permissions until these can be discussed more fully with all the officers concerned and presented to the Development Management Committee again for due consideration.
To date no such meeting has been offered.
We are sending this open letter/email to you and putting it on Facebook so our parishioners can see it and, hopefully, Central Beds Council Officers will now move this forward.
Kind Regards
Councillor Liz Childs
Councillor Anna French
Barton-le-Clay Parish Council