Plan for and Deliver Transport Infrastructure Ahead of New Homes

Tewkesbury Borough Council’s vision for the Tewkesbury Garden Communities includes 10,000 new homes being built, during the next 20 years, centred around the village of Ashchurch; predominantly on greenfield-land close to the A46, east of the Cheltenham - Birmingham railway line which divides the village.

The draft Programme Charter for the Garden Communities envisages development beginning in 2026.

Tewkesbury Borough Council, Gloucester City Council and Cheltenham Borough Council Strategic and Local Plan (SLP) considers afresh the development strategy for the area, in particular, whether it should continue to be based on the settlement hierarchy envisaged by the Joint Core Strategy, which it will supersede. Six distinct scenarios are presented and it is expected that the final strategy will be a combination of different elements from those options. Thus, it is by no means certain that the Tewkesbury Garden Communities will form part of the final SLP.

It will not be until early 2026 that the Regulation 19 consultation on the pre-submission draft SLP is expected to commence. Only after that is completed can the plan be submitted to the Secretary of State for independent examination and approval.

As detailed planning for supporting infrastructure for the Garden Communities can only be finalised once the SLP has been approved, there is considerable concern about the aspiration to commence construction of new homes as early as 2026.

For the reasons discussed below, the provision of adequate supporting infrastructure must be a key component of any development of the scale envisaged for the Garden Communities.

A traffic survey last July, showed that the residents of the 150 recently completed homes at Barleyfields, Ashchurch, undertook 90 car journeys on the A46 towards Tewkesbury on a weekday morning, between 07:00 and 09:00.

The capacity of the A46 towards Tewkesbury is limited to under 950 vehicles per hour constrained by the single carriageway design of the Ashchurch rail bridge and the adjacent residential developments.

There are already approvals to develop 1640 homes west of the railway line, in and around Fiddington. Many of the remaining 8360 Garden Community homes are destined to be built in the vicinity of Ashchurch and Pamington. To date, land with capacity for around 8500 homes has been identified in the areas of the proposed Aston-Fields and Seven Bends Garden Communities.

If the residents of these new homes were to demonstrate similar travel patterns to the Barleyfields residents, additional road infrastructure, with capacity approaching 3 times that of the current A46, would be required to link the new homes to the M5; employment in Ashchurch, Northway, Newtown and Tewkesbury and beyond; and the shops and other amenities provided by Tewkesbury.

Last year, it was announced that there is unlikely to be funding to deliver a bypass for the A46, from Teddington Hands to the M5, before 2036. Currently, during the morning and evening peak travel periods, the A46 operates at around 90% of capacity. Without a bypass to carry the A46 traffic from the midlands to the M5, in conjunction with new roads to carry local traffic from existing and proposed new homes towards Tewkesbury and beyond, Ashchurch would soon be gridlocked for much of the working day.

Government guidance on proposals for creating garden communities stresses the importance of demonstrating that they support economic growth and include provision for the timely delivery of necessary infrastructure. It also emphasises the importance of communities being built on a sustainable scale – with infrastructure to allow the communities to function self-sufficiently on a day-to-day basis - with capacity for future growth to meet the evolving housing and economic needs of the local area.

It should be clear from the above, that the provision of the A46 bypass is key to the successful delivery of the Tewkesbury Garden Communities programme. Gloucestershire County Council expects to consult on the routing of the proposed bypass this summer. Tewkesbury Borough Council should seize this opportunity to work with Gloucestershire County Council on the routing of the bypass and then plan the locations of new business opportunities with adequate access to the bypass and essential connectivity to the new homes. 

Tewkesbury Borough Council should not be contemplating approving building this number of new homes without first addressing the issues of exactly where employment, education, medical and other key facilities will be located, and planning for and working with partners to deliver travel links with adequate capacity.

The current situation, whereby planning permission can be granted for residential development without supporting infrastructure being in place, must not be allowed to continue.

These are not just my concerns. Since the beginning of December 2023, a petition to this effect has been viewed over 8000 times and 540 people have put their names to it

(https://www.change.org/p/help-save-ashchurch-from-gridlock).

Detailed calculations in support of the above conclusions are in the attached document.