THE CHARACTER of some Barnsley villages will be changed forever under council proposals to build thousands of new homes in the borough, a local MP has warned.
Angela Smith, who represents the Penistone area, is concerned over Barnsley Council’s Local Plan proposals, a blueprint for development which sets out future sites for housing and employment in the borough up to 2033.
This plan must be examined by a government inspector before it can be formally adopted and initial feedback from the inspector, indicating there was a mismatch between the housing and employment figures in the submitted plan, resulted in the council revising both figures to bring them more closely into alignment.
This will involve the projected jobs figure being brought down from 33,000 to 28,840 and the housing figure raised from 1,100 homes built per year to 1,134 over the life of the plan.
As a consequence the council is consulting on 19 additional sites for housing and safeguarded land allocations.
It is these extra sites which are the cause of concern for the MP.
She disagrees with the planning inspector’s recommendations that more homes are needed in villages and believes several safeguarded land sites included in previous drafts of the plan showed the council had planned for potential future expansion of rural villages, while recognising such expansion would be inappropriate at this time.
Angela said: “These latest plans in my view could substantially change some of the smaller villages in the west of the borough with many of the smaller recommended sites only contributing a marginal positive beneficial effect at the cost of changing the character of these communities forever.
“I’m now asking Barnsley planners and the inspector to think again on many of these sites. The previous plan made much more sense in recognising there is a need for housing, but not at the expense of completely changing the character of some of the smaller villages around the west of the borough.”
