New town for south Warwickshire likely to be approved

Senior councillors on Monday approved a proposal to include the scheme for the new town, put forward by the Commercial Estates Group (CEG), as a prority site when making decisions about where to place the 10,800 homes it has to build across the district by 2031.

That decision now has to be approved by all councillors at the next full council meeting, which takes place on Wednesday May 12.

Laura Steele, chairman of campaign group FORSE (Friends Of a Rural and Sustainable Environment) - which set up last year to voice people’s opposition against CEG’s plan - spoke at Monday’s meeting. She said: “TThere have been two sham consultations, designed to produce only one outcome – reports from the first skewing the evidence and the second skewing the numbers. The statistics have been manipulated.

“The decent people of Stratford district may wish to ask whether any of their elected representatives, of whatever political persuasion, would want anything to do with this tainted, discredited scheme, and any councillor with a shred of integrity would surely wish to disassociate themselves from it by voting against it.”

The meeting on May 12 takes place at the council headquarters at Elizabeth House in Stratford at 2pm.