Green Belts are areas of land that can't generally be developed on, except as a last resort. They are a good thing helping to preserve areas of open land, preventing housing estates growing out of control and keeping settlements distinct. The Green Belt lands are so protected that the SHLAA(Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment), used to determine key housing sites, doesn't even look at them (note 1). New green wedges for Killingworth and Murton are shown in the core strategy plan below as green arrows.
North Tyneside's latest core strategy preferences have halted potential housing developments on prime housing land around Killingworth and Murton (except for some new choice executive homes near Sandy Lane, probably for the top brass). All this has pushed the housing developments further south to Holystone, Shiremoor and Station Road on to the last remaining open fields in those areas, destroying valuable wildlife corridors and the only real open land available for residents of these areas to enjoy.
North Tyneside Councils 2009 SHLAA asked landowners and developers across North Tyneside for land that could have houses built on within 5 years. Naturally the land owners and developers knew a good thing when they saw it and submitted proposals for housing developments, some they'd not normally be allowed to develop under the present UDP and knowing farm land would yield a Kings ransom if someone actually agreed to building houses on it
To make sure the green field and protected agriculture sites went on to become the core strategy "preferred options", some development sites were assessed in the SHLAA as being capable of producing a token 100 homes in five years thus making them key priority sites. Whereas the sites such as Shiremoor (with roads already in place) and ahem (NTC's fave) Killingworth and Murton were strategically assessed as not capable of producing housing for 6 to 15 years.
Bearing in mind the council's selection criteria is if a site can't produce housing quickly it won't become a key priority site. Sites were safe from development if they were assessed as incapable of delivering housing quickly.
Noteworthy is site 75 (High Farm), to the East of Killingworth and identified as part of the Growth Bid housing land allocations process (site S8). North Tyneside Council received £2.5 Million to increase housing targets as part of the Growth Point scheme (£800,000.00 this year). This site was assessed by the council planners as only capable of delivering 500 homes in years 11 to 15 and the remainder in years 16+, the planners even claimed the highways access "Prevents housing".
When land owners Northumberland Estates, with substantially more experience of land development well beyond North Tyneside, chiped in suggesting the "Site is Developable (1-5 Years). It is the Northumberland Estates opinion that this site, alongside site 108 [Killingworth] can be developed in the shorter term years 1-5.". The planners were not deterred and the officer responded saying, "Given the scale and immediate access constraints affecting the site [bordered at each end by a good quality access road], an assessment of the site as Deliverable 1-5 is not appropriate"!!! So were the planners really saying it would take more than 11 years to think about and then construct a road junction on to the A1056 or B1317? [source: 2009 SHLAA Site 075]
Effectively protecting the Killingworth and Murton areas even more from housing development the planners then decided green wedges around Killingworth and Murton were proposed as part of their "Spatial Strategy", the planners then went on to reject numerous sites around Murton and Killingworth because they were "contrary to the (proposed) preferred spatial strategy"... (see Housing Sites)
It is worrying the council seem hell bent on protecting some of the housing sites around Killingworth and Murton (such as High Farm, site 75, mentioned above). Many of these sites, already rejected by the council in the core strategy preferred options, score higher in the sustainability appraisal and were apparently only rejected by the council because they were not in accordance with the "green wedge" preferences of the preferred "spatial strategy".
Worrying for democracy and community involvement, residents were never given (in the CSPO) the option of voting for the extensive green wedges around Killingworth and Murton. This is in table 9 (option 12) "Distribution of Development" in the CSPO document (peculiarly "green wedge and distibuted development" in the questionnaire) the council:
Some of the councillors are listed by North Tyneside council, or from their last election, as living adjacent the Killingworth and Murton green wedges, so best of luck persuading those councillors to support development of 3510 socially rented/intermediate homes in those green wedge zones instead of the green fields where you live.
Seems a lot of Councillors are "moving" to the Council offices at the Quadrant after the appearance of this article
The driver for housing land for the 4000 new homes proposed by the core strategy preferred options is to meet the need of social/intermediate housing. The Council backlog of 2,600 social/intermediate homes is proposed by North Tyneside Council to be cleared over ten years at a rate of 351 socially/intermediate (affordable) homes made available per year (or 3510 in total over ten years). The essential ingredient for builders to willingly build that much social/intermediate housing, particularly in a declining housing market, is cheap land - this pretty much means green fields.
Generally the SHLAA assessed the Killingworth and Murton sites as needing more than five years to
yield homes, knocking them down and off the list of preferred and key sites, many for implausible reasons including
"masterplan approach needed" and "We need to think about roads". They're the
council, can they seriously expect people to believe it takes them 5 to 15 years to work out
how a road can best go around a housing estate or where would be a good place local for shops.
The North Tyneside Council's reasoning was so far-fetched that it would have been more
believable if they talked about flux capacitors and dilithium crystals.
Surely they must allow building around Killingworth and Murton at some point? Don't bet on it, like the miser Ebenezer Scrooge counting his money and treasures, North Tyneside Council is busy working on fortifying Killingworth and Murton, jealously guarding their green fields with newly designated Green wedge areas, knowing all too well that those area's will never again be assessed for housing development, at least until every other bit of open green land in North Tyneside is built on.
The entire process of SHLAA to core strategy is a sham, Green belt land is not considered for
development in the SHLAA but all other open and green land is, including wildlife corridors and protected agricultural land. If North Tyneside Council can't operate a fair and transparent system of selecting key housing sites, by factoring in the current land use, then North Tyneside Council should designate the open land enjoyed by the communities such as Holystone, Shiremoor and Station Road as Green Belt land and thus exclude them from development and the next SHLAA.
Come on NTC, why should the residents of Holystone, Shiremoor and Station Road lose their green
fields just so the council can stare out from Killingworth over the vast green wedges and
"adopted" green belts of empire Killingworth and Murton. Fair's fair B, we deserve our green wedges too.
A google map of the one of the rejected sites to the East of Killingworth (site 75, High Farm) area is all fields between A1056 (Killingworth Way) to the north and B1317 to the south. Rejected as development site because "Site would not be readily integrated into urban area and would have a significant landscape impact, extending urban area into relatively open countryside."
View Larger Map
Note 1: The SHLAA classifies green belt lands as catergory 1 "unsuitable" and assesses them as "Not Presently Developable", see SHLAA (2.25, 2.37, 2.38). The 2009 SHLAA Map shows all sites across North Tyneside assessed by the SHLAA, the sites classed as "Not presently developable" are shown in Red.
