Colchester City Council Preferred Options Local Plan Regulation 18 Consultation 2025

This submission from Great Horkesley Parish Council (GHPC) responds to the proposition (PP34)
contained in the Preferred Option Local Plan consultation that before 2041 around 400 dwellings
should be provided on two adjacent sites north of Coach Road in the village.
2. The matter is complicated because the City Council has already given outline consent, albeit
conditionally, for the development of 150 homes on the more southerly site, opposite ribbon
development on the south side of Coach Road. To forestall local criticism, it is restated here that
GHPC objected to that consent. That said, for the purposes of this submission, it is accepted that
this consent has effectively determined the status of this southerly site as housing land and it will
not be contested here.
The existing Great Horkesley settlement
3. The preamble contains a significant error in the sentence “…development has spread westwards
along a number of roads off the main road. Land to the east of the main road has remained relatively
free of development and is more open in character.” At the time of writing, a reserved matters
application for consent for 100 dwellings to be built to the east of the main road around Great
Horkesley Manor is close to agreement. Also to the east of the main road, in the late 1980s 60
dwellings were built south of The Crescent, triggering sporadic infill, still ongoing, in the years
since.
4. In the same period, on the west side of the main road, in the mid-1990s 34 houses were built at
the end of Keelers Way, whilst in the following decade, 154 dwellings were built on Tile House Farm.
Thus as far as east and west are concerned, the honours are more or less even: two significant sites
on each side, with dwelling numbers roughly of the same magnitude. Whilst it is true that the 100
houses around The Manor have yet to be built, it is disingenuous to describe that land as free of
development and … more open in character when it is most unlikely to be so by the time the
emerging Local Plan is adopted.
5. This is not cavilling over minor detail. The land around The Manor appears in the current Local
Plan precisely because it has well-defined boundaries, in contrast to sites west of the current
settlement boundaries which were offered under the previous Call for Sites, adoption of which as
housing land was recognised as likely to lead to a sprawl out into the open countryside. This
potential sprawl was identified best avoided in the draft Settlement Boundary Review prepared by
the planning authority as part of the current plan review process and sent to GHPC for comment.
GHPC updated the draft, mostly identifying changes in local facilities, and returned it to the
planning authority.
6. No explanation has ever been given for the decision to perform a volte face and recommend for
major development land which had previously been identified by both authorities as open
countryside best left undeveloped. At the very least, one would have expected draft PP34 to have
recognised the problematic absence of strong natural boundaries between Coach Road and Old
House Road, just as did the Settlement Boundary Review, but it is silent on the matter.
The development proposal in PP34
7. GHPC would argue that, taking into account the 150-dwelling site that has outline consent, there
are obvious boundaries to the existing and consented development north of Coach Road. In the
east, there is frontage onto Nayland Road and The Causeway, the main road. To the south, the
boundary is Coach Road itself, closely developed at the eastern end but less so towards
Woodhouse Corner, on the settlement boundary. From the main road to Woodhouse Corner, the
developed land forms (or strictly will form) a rough quadrilateral with the Jubilee Green at its
centre.
8. At its western end, the northern edge of this quadrilateral of development is the only strong
boundary between Coach Road and Old House Road. It should be recognised as such and
respected. To go beyond it, as draft PP34 proposes, is to invite, in decades to come, loss of
countryside to urban sprawl, as foreseen in the agreed Settlement Boundary Review. To avoid
this, there should as a matter of policy be no development north of the site which currently has
outline consent.
9. Furthermore, because the more northerly site of those identified in PP34 is bounded on three
sides by open countryside, albeit with the rural part of Coach Road running through it,
development here will be particularly intrusive, especially when viewed from Old House Road to
the north, the village green to the north east and the public right of way which connects them.
Housing numbers
10. Failing to take account of the 100 dwellings to be built around The Manor enables the impact
of the 400 proposed for the PP34 site to be set in a false context. In recent decades Great
Horkesley has not been shy of major development: Tile House Farm was notably the largest greenfield site in the relevant plan period and was built with full support from GHPC. The Parish Council
also supported the inclusion of the land around the Manor in the current Local Plan and has worked
with other stakeholders to ensure that it brings benefit to the village. It has also worked in the
same way, albeit rather more reluctantly, with the would-be developer of the 150-dwelling site
north of Coach Road and will continue to do so.
11. For the purpose of assessing the impact on the village, these two developments “in the
pipeline” totalling 250 dwellings must be considered together. PP34 would increase those
“pipeline developments” to 500, the impact of which on a village currently of around 1300 built
dwellings is deeply concerning. Removing the truly rural dwellings from this consideration, PP34
as it stands would bring about an increase of over 50% in urban dwellings in the parish. It is doubtful
that any amount of master-planning, as proposed in the policy, could mitigate the impact of such
a massive increase on village organisations and social life in such a relatively short time, especially
in a village which has no medical facilities of its own and where the three GP practices in adjacent
areas are already overloaded.
12. The impact of schools is also of concern. It is widely assumed that youngsters from Great
Horkesley are likely to be admitted to Trinity School in Chesterwell, an easy cycle ride from Coach
Road. In fact, the default secondary school for Great Horkesley is the St Helena School, some 4
miles from the PP34 site. Because its admission criteria are distance-based, Trinity School is already
reducing the proportion of pupils it takes from Great Horkesley. There is currently a bus route
between the village and St Helena school but journey times are (in the long experience of the
writer) unpredictable, especially for pupils wishing to take part in activities outside teaching hours.
13. The impact on the Bishop William Ward primary school in the village is also of concern. While
developers and the education authority will of course ensure that BWWS has the capacity to teach
children living in the new developments, the physical expansion of the school to accommodate the
children from 500 new homes will be massive. Once the “bulge” in pupil numbers resulting from
the new development has passed, there will be physical over-capacity in the village school which
the education authority will want to fill by bringing in children from outside the village. Even taking
into account the measures set out in the conditions of the 150-dwelling consent, if they are
enacted, this importing of pupils will exacerbate existing congestion and parking problems around
BWWS.
14. Finally, employment. There are two established employers in the village, a school
photographers and an agro-business growing and packaging onions for supermarkets; they are
unlikely to offer many new jobs as the village expands. There are other minor businesses on the
main road. In promoting a 400-home expansion of the village, it is surprising that the planning
authority did not identify the need to increase the amount of employment land within the village,
perhaps on one of the offered sites on or close to the main road. Reducing the need to travel to
work by fuelled vehicles and increasing the ability of people to walk or cycle to work should be at
the heart of a Local Plan. PP34 is silent on this, even though the 400-dwelling proposal is the 5th
largest in the whole of Colchester in emerging draft Plan.
Conclusion
15. Great Horkesley Parish Council remains open to reasonable proposals to provide additional
housing, recreational facilities including improved access to the countryside, and employment
opportunities provided that it is clear that no harm to the quality of life of the existing residents
will result and that appropriate mitigation of the impact of the development is feasible.
16. Having considered PP34 as it stands, GHPC takes the view that 400 new homes cannot be
provided on the site identified in PP34 without causing harms that cannot be mitigated, as set
out above, to the quality of life to those already living in the village and damage to the
countryside around it both directly within the Plan period and indirectly in the decades to come.
17. The number of new dwellings to be provided on the site identified in PP34 should be reduced
to 150, as per the outline planning consent already granted. The northernmost part of the site,
which is currently designated as open countryside, should be removed from the consultation
draft.
Please note: GHPC will conduct a Housing Needs Survey to demonstrate that the provision of 250
new dwellings on the land around Great Horkesley Manor and North of Coach Road is more than
enough to meet local demand for the foreseeable future. It will aim to share the results with the
planning authority before the results of the Regulation 18 consultation are put to elected
members.
CJA/January 2026P