3 days ago5 min read

Write to the planning committee to have your final say on EPIC

EPIC’s planning application is huge and complex. The final thing you can do is send a letter of concern to North Somerset's Planning & Regulatory Committee.

Below are some handy bullet points for you to consider including in your message. If you’ve got time, please change into your own words and/or add a personal summary upfront.

To: Members of the North Somerset Planning & Regulatory Committee

(see email addresses below)

Subject: Re. Planning Application 23/P/2185/FU/2

Please consider the following points before your final meeting on this application:

The fundamental aim of the Green Belt remains, to this day, to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open around urban areas. EPIC claims that they will leave a ‘strategic gap’ included to the west of the site to avoid merging Long Ashton & Bristol. However Long Ashton Parish Council obtained legal advice that the proposed ‘strategic gap’ would be unenforceable and would not inhibit further development in this location.
The principle of development is still unacceptable and the benefits assumed by the applicant are not considered to outweigh harm to the Green Belt and, therefore the proposal would not comply with national guidance as set out in the NPFF.
North Somerset Council declared a Climate Emergency in 2019. With the on-going adverse impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss increasingly seen across the world, any development should be viewed through this lens to guide the decision-making process. There are huge embodied carbon costs in this construction that will have negative effects on both the environment and sustainability. EPIC’s behaviour in the US, with constant re-building of existing buildings and expansion of new campus after new campus shows that there’s no understanding of the need for restraint.
Despite the lengthy documents provided by the Applicant, namely the Alternative Sites Assessment and the Town Centre Sequential Test, there is not sufficient justification to the ‘need’ of the development at the application site as opposed to the ‘desire’ for the development.
North Somerset's Local Plan highlights Weston super Mare as a key area to target for growth and development; this application does not support this agenda.
During its search for their ‘forever home’, EPIC has stuck rigidly to a business model that fits within the US working culture but is alien to the UK’s more flexible working environment that is valued by both the new Government and the UK workforce.
The financial benefits to North Somerset are acknowledged but these can be secured regardless of the location of their office campus in the UK due to the nature of their business. This site will not alter the scope of their business plan nor alter the services they provide
Economic benefits claimed by the Applicant don’t stand up to scrutiny. A significant proportion of the 2,150 jobs that may be created will be taken by residents from outside of North Somerset. Roughly 20% (just 430) people will be employed from North Somerset: not worth the disruption and damage that the development will cause to Long Ashton and the surrounding areas. It’s unlikely that North Somerset has a significant pool of life sciences talent so employees will be drawn from Bristol & London.
Epic describes themselves as a software company. The software they build may have healthcare application but they are not clearly generating growth or employment in North Somerset’s health sector. Their software is well-know for being exclusive and expensive, further narrowing it's application.
The total footprint of the site has been under-estimated by the Applicant since it doesn’t include the solar far, internal road networks, public paths and access arrangements. If the Applicant had adopted a more transparent approach, it would be obvious that there will be substantial harm to the openness and permanence of the Green Belt.
The Applicant has stated that if it does not locate at this site, it will not locate elsewhere in the UK. This amounts to extortion as the Applicant appears to intimidate NSC into making a decision based on fear that the country will lose a ‘top tier project’.
Bristol City Council has objected to the proposal observing that the site is not readily accessible to a network of public transit choice and its remoteness from other forms of development means minimal opportunities for linked trips – therefore contradictory to Part 9 of the NPPF 'Promoting Sustainable Transport’.
Bristol City Council also states that the proposal will diminish the separate of Bristol from Long Ashton.
Active Travel England, Historic England, Campaign for Rural England, Parish Councils Airport Association, other parishes both neighbouring and further afield have all put in their own informed and individual objections
To date there are 679 residents’ objections registered online with only 43 in support. Retention of the Green Belt to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss figures highly in most objections with people, like me, concerned about the effect of such a busy site in terms of vehicles and footfall on resident wildlife.
Some of the Biodiversity Net Gain benefits will not be realised until 2068 which means there will be no regulation on what’s been achieved or not. Notwithstanding this, the world will have changed profoundly in this time with the adverse impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss accelerating every year.
Numerous anomalies have been identified in the tree and hedgerow habitats alone so there may be more found in other elements of the biodiversity evidence. For example, the biodiversity evidence has undervalued or ignored 597 trees. So, before any decision can be made on matters such as these, please seek your own independent evidence to review the claims made by the Applicant.
Like others, am deeply concerned that Bristol Airport Ltd is a staunch supporter of this application relishing, of course, the opportunity to expand its business into Europe, the Middle East and the US. An interview by the CEO, on 4th November, claims that there are already plans to expand the airport further to exceed 12m passengers per year. A public consultation is imminent with a detailed planning application due early next year. Any expansion in the airport will be detrimental to many communities who already suffer from noise and air pollution, excessive vehicle traffic, and can see the carbon costs of air traffic mounting up despite the CEO’s claims to the contrary.
Trust in both national and local government is low, with people becoming less inclined to vote and those that do increasingly feel their voices are not heard – the fears of increased air and water pollution, congestion of roads, loss of high quality green & blue space, loss of community, loss of a semi-rural identity and wiping out historic elements of both village and the rural environment are deeply-held feelings that motivate people, like me, to write to members of this Committee.