Open Letter to Warminster Town Council Regarding Housing Allocation within the Draft Neighbourhood Plan
This is the text of the open letter we would like to send on your behalf to Warminster Town Council.
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Following the publication of the draft Neighbourhood Plan for Warminster, we request that our concerns, outlined below, regarding the housing allocation for our town be duly noted and recorded during your Regulation 14 consultative process. It is our collective view that you had no clear mandate from the residents of Warminster, to select and allocate any site and progress it through to Regulation 14.
We are making a formal request, in the strongest possible terms, that Warminster Town Council remove all stated housing allocation from the draft Neighbourhood Plan before it progresses to Regulation 16.
1. No strategic ‘need’ to allocate any sites for development in the Neighbourhood Plan in the context of recent and planned housing development
The Council has failed to legitimise its naming of a site for development within the Neighbourhood Plan, set against the context of a number of ‘speculative’ housing bids coming forward. This has created huge potential for over development. In reality, there are already a number of developments which are either already approved, or where the developers are currently engaged at some level in the planning process.
By the time the Neighbourhood Plan is ‘made’ in late summer of this year, the housing and community landscape for residents will already be potentially very different. The notion of a ‘protective’ element of a Neighbourhood Plan in relation to developers currently engaged in the planning process is misleading.
These current planning bids are in addition to the vast West Urban Extension of 1000 homes (2026), increasing to 1500 by 2042:
- Cley Hill View – 227 dwellings (already approved and being marketed )
- Ashley Coombe – 77 dwellings (planning application in)
- Westbury Road – 205 dwellings (rejected in 2025 ; new planning application in)
- Home Farm – 90 -135 dwellings (developer consultation phase completed, application imminent)
- Grovelands – 68 dwellings (building already started)
2. An abject failure to meaningfully engage our community and acknowledge concerns that the scale of development is leading to a significant degradation of local services and infrastructure.
As a council, you have failed to produce a base of evidence which demonstrates a scale of meaningful community engagement over housing related issues within the draft Neighbourhood Plan.
We further believe that you are unable to demonstrate that you have a clear mandate from residents of our town to progress any site allocation to the consultative phase of Regulation 14.
3. No acknowledgement of cumulative hydrological risks. Continual urban development within the the River Wylye catchment basin is unsustainable and will lead to an ever increasing frequency of flooding and sewage outfalls which will be a blight for future generations in our town.
As a Council, you have been repeatedly warned about the implications of continued urban growth with regard to localised flooding, sewage discharge and environmental damage to the precious natural resource of the river Wylye. Because responsibility for hydrological issues within a given catchment area falls between a number of statutory bodies, no single organisation has an overview of what is happening.
To your shame, you seem content to look at individual plans for development and their notional ‘mitigations’ to minimise hydrological risks, without any holistic consideration of the cumulative hydrological effects. Your apparent indifference over this issue is alarming. A Council should NOT be allocating ANY SITE without a secure understanding of the potential response of the catchment area to multiple developments.
We do recognise that a Neighbourhood Plan can provide a positive framework for change and that new, carefully and responsibly planned development can improve the vibrancy of our town.
If housing allocation is included in the Neighbourhood Plan document, then you are advised it is our stated intention to pursue this matter in far greater detail at Regulation 16. This communication is being forwarded to you on behalf of Warminster residents who have consented to their details being held centrally on the EBBRAG database. These are available for your scrutiny.