A PREFERRED location for a potential Gypsy Traveller site has been identified after a process that has lasted a year.
A field behind Langley Close in Magor, Oak Grove farm in Portskewett and Bradbury Farm in Crick, near Caldicot, have been under consideration since November.
At that point Monmouthshire County Council agreed to a consultation on the three locations and to commission technical reports.
It has now been confirmed Bradbury Farm in Crick is recommended for inclusion in the council’s long term planning blueprint, the replacement local development plan, as the preferred option for development as a Gypsy and Traveller site.
Langley Close and Oak Grove will no longer be considered under the process that started with council meetings in July last year.
The replacement local development plan is intended to guide where new housing and employment sites should be developed across Monmouthshire, but development of any individual sites – including Gypsy Traveller pitches at Bradbury Farm – would still be subject to planning applications.
Councillor Paul Griffiths, the Labour cabinet member responsible for planning, confirmed the preferred location at the full council meeting on July 18.
He said: “Only one of the three sites will be included in the replacement local development plan, and the proposed site with the most advantages, and least disadvantages – there is no perfect site – is Bradbury Farm in the Portskewett ward.”
A special meeting of the council’s place scrutiny committee on Wednesday, July 24 will consider the recommendation.
Cllr Griffiths, who represents the Chepstow Castle ward, said a decision by the July planning committee to approve an application, by a family, for a four pitch Gypsy Traveller site at Llancayo, near Usk had also reduced the assessed need for future sites in the county.
The council, which is legally required to assess the need for Gypsy, Roma, Traveller pitches, previously identified demand for 11 pitches and Cllr Griffiths said as a result of the planning approval that has reduced to seven with only one site now needed in the development plan.
Portskewett Conservative councillor Lisa Dymock said she wanted to know how the council will preserve the Needern Brook wetland, site of special scientific interest, close by at Caldicot and described access at Bradbury Farm as unsuitable for a Gypsy Traveller site due a blind bend.
Cllr Griffiths said he agreed Crick Road “does not provide suitable access” but said by the time any pitches would be in place the strategic housing site in Portskewett/Caldicot East would be in development and that will have to include “safe walking, cycling, praming routes from this Travellers site through the residential site into the amenities in Caldicot.”
Following the scrutiny committee Cllr Griffiths said he will consider all comments before presenting the proposal to include Bradbury Farm in the development plan at a special cabinet meeting on August 21. The replacement local development plan will be presented to the full council in October and published for further consultation in November and December.
The special meeting of the place scrutiny committee to consider the inclusion of the Bradbury Farm site will take place at County Hall in Usk at 4.30pm on Wednesday, July 24.
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