This site is identified for a garden village to the west of Hethel. The number of dwellings is not specified at this stage. It is identified as a reasonable alternative for a new settlement in a future review of the GNLP. These types of development typically take much longer to proceed through the planning processes and deliver housing than originally predicted, largely because they are complex and require significant levels of primary infrastructure to be provided e.g. roads and drainage in advance of housing. Therefore, it is very unlikely that this garden village would be delivered very quickly. It is not clear at this stage whether this garden village would provide policy compliant levels of affordable housing, and it is requested that the site promoter confirms whether it can or not taking into account the costs of providing primary infrastructure in advance of development. It should be noted that the new settlement examples in Cambridgeshire which are under construction (Cambourne, Northstowe and Alconbury Weald), referred to in Paragraph 23 of the New Settlements Topic Paper, are not able to meet local affordable housing policy requirements; there is an additional new settlement example at Waterbeach (in South Cambridgeshire) which is providing no affordable housing in the first phase. The timescales for the delivery of garden villages and the ability of these types of development to provide policy compliant levels of affordable housing need to be fully understood and assessed before they are considered as a realistic option for GNLP.

It is clear that this site is not being considered for allocation in the emerging GNLP, and therefore it requested that this site is deleted as a reasonable alternative site.