MK East

Newlands

The outline planning application has been granted permission for storage and distribution (Use Class B8) floorspace, with ancillary offices and associated infrastructure, including access, parking, servicing and landscaping. This is for land at Caldecote Farm Willen Road Newport Pagnell. The documents can be viewed on the MK Council website.

Post: FAO Milton Keynes East, St James Group Limited, Berkeley House, 15b St George Wharf, London, SW8 2LE

Phone: 020 3675 1502

The Design and Access statements that these plans were taken from can be downloaded from the MK Council website on the dedicated MK East page

Drop in Chat with Parish Councillors

Some of the concerns highlighted:

• the proposed T-junction is inadequate for access to village
• the possible increase in construction traffic and HGV through the village
• the introduction of a weight restriction is needed to protect properties
• construction traffic not to come through the village,
• signage and enforcement of traffic restrictions need to be in place
• the phases and timescale of the road construction needs to be included
• details of how the road construction on Newport Road will impact access to the village
• information required for the measures planned to minimise effects of roadworks to residents
• questioning over the Biodiversity claims from the developers
• school catchment area is likely to include children from Moulsoe village, there is no safe route from the village to the school locations on foot/cycle
• to preserve the mature trees already within the development area
• how many trees would be used to create the woodland green buffer for the village

MK East Timeline

November 2006

• the inaugural meeting of eastern expansion area stakeholder group took place

September 2008

• letters of objection sent to Milton Keynes (MK) Council regarding proposed development east of the M1

September 2012

• industrial units proposed by the developers The Berkeley Group
• plans did not proceed
• local plan did not include that area for industrial development
• Inspector rejected the site for inclusion.
• The Berkley Group continued to work with MK Council planners
• Plan:MK was being prepared and it was expected that this area will be included for industrial purposes

Autumn 2014

• MK Council was at the first stage of preparing a new local plan Plan:MK
• a Site Allocations plan was prepared

December 2014

• Milton Keynes Council concluded its consultation on Plan:MK
• Moulsoe Parish Council submitted its comments on the plan.

December 2015

• a Public Meeting was held on at Moulsoe Millennium Hall
• Moulsoe Parish Council with neighbouring town and parish councils called in MK Councils decision to commence a public consultation on 24 November 2015
• this related to four Strategic Development Options including two that could dramatically change the character and landscape for Moulsoe and the surrounding rural parishes
• the “call in” was intended to challenge the validity and methodology of the options put forward
• also to delay the commencement of the public consultation to help us understand the proposals, inform our residents of what is at stake for Moulsoe and to recruit expert support.
• Executive Scrutiny Panel considered the reasons for the various “call in” requests
• it conceded that the process to develop the options was not as robust as it could have been
• it decided to proceed with public consultation about the options but not until January 2016
• the panel agreed to rename the four options as “concepts” and to remove the names of the potential rural settlements and marks on a map
• Moulsoe Parish Council worked with RuCASS and the surrounding rural parishes to respond as formal bodies

January 2016

• public consultation commenced
• public meeting for Moulsoe residents took place on 28 January 2106

April 2016

• Moulsoe Parish Council submitted their response to the consultation

Spring 2017

• the next iteration of Plan:MK set out MK Council’s strategy for meeting the boroughs needs until 2031
• the plan set out the preferred options, which includes development of land East of the M1 motorway, south of Newport Pagnell, envisaging a sustainable urban extension post 2026
• Ward Councillors hosted a Public Meeting on 28 March 2017

July 2017

• the Government announced the £2.3bn Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) to be awarded to local authorities on a competitive bid basis
• awards would be granted to build new infrastructure to support housing developments in areas of greatest demand
• MK Council planned to submit a bid for funding to support the development of 5000 new homes east of the M1 on land bordering the A509 towards Newport Pagnell and extending east towards Moulsoe
• this rescinded the designation of this area as a Strategic Reserve Area for use after 2031 in the last version of Plan:MK
• any development of this area was conditional upon MK Council winning their bid.

December 2017

• the latest version of Plan:MK was released for a consultation period ending December 2017
• Moulsoe Parish Council responded to this consultation

Spring 2018

• in response to a draft Plan:MK review at the end of summer 2017 the parish council made a further response to MKC in October 2017
• this addressed a range of revisions and local area proposals that could have potentially damaging effects for the area east of the M1
• the response focussed on relevant comments from previous submission in June 2017
• it was also supported by recent statements made by the chancellor in the 2017 Autumn Budget
• Plan:MK was timetabled to be submitted for consideration by the Planning Inspectorate

Summer 2018

• Plan:MK hearings were held in July and August 2018
• Inspector David Spencer proposed a schedule of Main Modifications he considered necessary to make the plan sound
• the schedule was then subject to public consultation ending in December 2018
• the parish was represented at the MK East Local Stakeholder Group by parish councillors.
• the purpose of the group was to openly discuss the objectives and aspirations of development in the eastern area also to challenge the reasons and need for expansion in Moulsoe parish

Autumn 2018

• the HIF bid submission was delayed from December to March 2019

Spring 2019

• the HIF bid to support housing development East of the M1 was submitted to government on 22 May 2019
• it was in opposition to local parish councillors, residents, ward councillors and our MPs
• the parish council continued to attend Local Stakeholder Group meetings and made submissions to Cllr Pete Marland, the leader of MKC, regarding the inappropriateness of the bid and its misguided intentions.

July 2019

• Ward Councillors “called in” the decision of a MK Council Delegated Decision meeting regarding the consultation of the supplementary planning document for the design of MK East
• this was adopted in January 2020

May 2020

• land surveys commence on the land allocated for MK East

July 2020

• HIF bid was successful for MK Council
• the funding had various terms attached

November 2020

• MK Council and Homes for England sign contracts that enable MK Council to access the money from the HIF

February 2021

• Moulsoe Parish Council meet with the main developers St. James
• All residents receive a Consultation Brochure from St. James

April 2021

• Planning Application from developers submitted

Moulsoe against Expansion 2 East

Some may relish the thought of the development of 5000 new houses east of the M1, others will consider it with utmost contempt and a feeling of betrayal on the part of MK Council and their planning department.

The area was always considered protected not only by the M1 as a northern boundary to Milton Keynes (as detailed in the “The New Plan for MK 2005”) but also by the fact that the potential for extensive building development is currently constrained by the lack of infrastructure – telecoms, drainage, energy supply, roads, public transport – all fundamental to any large scale residential building project.

The latest draft of Plan:MK was released for a consultation period that ended in December 2017

The previous version closed its consultation in June 2017 and the draft designated the eastern area as a Strategic Reserve Area (SRA), an area that could be used for development after 2031 or prior to that if MKC could demonstrate a significantly reduced supply of deliverable housing sites in existing designated areas. The lack of infrastructure to the east were clearly identified as being an issue requiring substantial sums of forward funding to kick-start any development activity.

In July 2017, the government announced the £2.3bn Housing Infrastructure Fund to be awarded to local authorities on a competitive bid basis.  Awards are to be used to build new infrastructure to support housing developments in areas of greatest demand. The areas east of the M1are not areas of great housing demand, MK is the area of housing demand so housing needs to focus on areas closer to the heart of the city not locations remotely associated.

MKC have seen this as a potential golden egg and have decided to bid for funding to support the development of 5000 new homes east of the M1 on land bordering the A509 towards Newport Pagnell/extending east towards Moulsoe. This clearly rescinds the proposed designation of this area as a Strategic Reserve Area for use after 2031 in the last version of Plan:MK which we were all asked to comment on in June 17.

The cynics amongst us might say that we may have been misled by the contents of the last version of the draft! Consultation ended in Jun and the HIF was announced in July – are we to believe that pre-June no one had any idea that the HIF was coming and this proposal, to the east, was simply shoe-horned in at the last minute?

Any proposed development is conditional upon MK Council winning their bid estimated to be in region of £75m. The funding is supposed to cover:

• Major upgrade to M1 J14 – this is needed anyway!
• Public transport scheme linking CMK to the eastern development – surely maintaining and developing the existing failing public transport system in existing or identified housing development areas in the Jun draft would be a better investment.
• A new bridge over the M1 and associated link road at Willen – estimated cost £25m. So as more traffic funnels onto the grid road system are the grid roads are being upgraded with extra lanes to cope with extra load being presented to them or will we end up with the inevitable bottleneck as we do currently on A509 from Olney. Adding to this will be a further few thousand vehicle movements from the eastern area.

This begs the question is a new bridge a sensible and rational use of these funds? Would spending £25m elsewhere in MK on infrastructure provide more in the way of benefit and housing potential than building what is in effect a dormitory in the east of the borough an area which could be considered so physically removed from MK it will more likely to be considered Greater MK rather than be part of the hub-bub of what living in MK people aspire to when they relocate to the area.

Draft Plan:MK (Jun 17) had embodied sufficient potential housing capacity with a contingency for going east if required. So what has changed so dramatically to make the eastern area so attractive when it was originally considered suitable as an SRA? The potential of a government handout or developers seeking to simple increase shareholder value.

We have yet to see whether the current version of the draft will stand the test of soundness when submitted to the planning inspectorate – has it been positively prepared, is it justified, is it effective and is it consistent with national policy?

We must not lose sight of the fact that we are in the grip of a housing crisis but critical problems deserve creative thinking and solutions that are economically and environmentally sound and sustainable. Simply dropping a development in an arbitrary area of open countryside because there is a potential of an infrastructure grant is not the product of sound thinking, especially since this option was placed in a “reserve” position in previous iteration of the draft.

It is imperative that all residents of Moulsoe, North Crawley, the surrounding rurals and any resident of MK Borough, especially those who will be affected by the collateral effects of construction traffic and the post-construction movements of thousands of extra vehicles, make their views known during the current consultation period and, we hope, object to any development east of the M1.

Without your input the development steam-roller will continue to roll across the UK without challenge and we will simply lose the balance we currently enjoy between the urban and the rural settings.

Steve Waters
Chair – Moulsoe Parish Council