The Parish Council is unanimously opposed to the proposed new settlement. At a well-attended public meeting, called by the Council on February 19th 2018 in Colton Village Hall, all the attendees were opposed: this should not seem surprising given the scale of the proposal. The residents of Marlingford and Colton Parish value their environment as it is. This was clearly established in the Parish Plan for Marlingford and Colton in 2006 (available at marlingfordandcoltonpc@norfolkparishes.gov.uk). As indicated in the Parish Plan, they value the quiet, friendly and rural nature of where they live, with a very strong appreciation of the local landscape and wildlife. Nothing has happened since then, including various public and parish council meetings, to suggest that those views have changed.
The Council's objections are:
It is not necessary to build a new settlement in order to achieve the housing targets in the Greater Norwich Local Plan. The proposed location is greenfield rather than the preferred brownfield or public land. As the Topic Paper states: new settlements can be an expensive and slow means of meeting housing need, their delivery can be risky and unpredictable and providing infrastructure to support them risks reducing funding for potentially more sustainably located extensions to existing settlements. The proposed settlement, being isolated from any existing settlements, would undoubtedly have high infrastructure costs for roads, water, sewerage and electricity. It is suggested in the Topic Paper that there should be easy access, particularly on foot and by bicycle, to primary and secondary schools and an existing range of retail, health and leisure services in an existing settlement to support the early years of development of the community and to provide choice. The nearest Service Village is Easton where a development of approximately 890 houses is now commencing - it is not hard to see that there could be capacity constraints with the primary school; the nearest high school is the Ormiston Victory Academy in Costessey, about 4 miles away; the nearest surgery is the Roundwell Medical Centre, about 3.5 miles away.
The whole development would represent an extension of the Norwich Urban Area westwards to Honingham and Colton. There would be a loss of visual amenity, increased traffic, noise, atmospheric pollution, and light pollution of the night sky, together with the loss of much attractive countryside and valuable agricultural land. Site D and parts of Sites A and C are grade 2 agricultural land; the grade 2 land that is located in the south-western third of the Food Enterprise Zone (FEZ), Site C, will be lost as the FEZ develops. It is surely not the time to be losing something like 120ha (about 300 acres) of good quality agricultural land.
The area occupied by Site A is particularly attractive with undulating topography and woodland - a Norfolk County Council Maintained Unsurfaced Road, Grange Lane, runs through the site, from Colton Road at the west end to Blind Lane at its eastern end; Grange Lane is regularly used by walkers. Site D occupies attractive countryside and, being on high ground, would be visible from a considerable area. The Council has no comments on Sites E and F other than to say that Colton Wood, a semi-natural ancient woodland, and much of the Yare Rural River Valley, in the area proposed for a Country Park, are already accessible by five public rights-of-way: http://maps.norfolk.gov.uk/highways/.