Ben Daines – Case Officer
Nicola Hurley - Interim Head of Planning
Brighton and Hove City Council
By email

Dear Ben and Nicola,

Objection to BH2022/02232 - Patcham Court Farm, Vale Avenue, Brighton, BN1 8YF

I have been working closely with Caroline Lucas, until recently MP for the Brighton Pavilion constituency, and speaking with residents in Patcham for many months in preparation for representing their interests in the application for a new Royal Mail delivery office on the site of Patcham Court Farm.

As part of this I have visited this site on several occasions to examine the potential impacts on transport and road danger, to see the setting, surrounding roads and topography of the area, observe the impact of flooding and sewage overflows, walk around the current site, and listen to the very serious concerns of residents at a number of meetings.

After seeing and hearing all this evidence, and after reviewing the application documents and the relevant planning policies, I must now object strongly to this proposed development.

Residents have given more details on a range of issues in their objections, including the quality and accuracy of the documents supplied, alternative plans from the community, flood risks and ecology, and I also support their points, but the main issues I will focus on are:

1. This is not an appropriate use of this land so approval is contrary to the NPPF. In support of this point, the City Plan does not allow for this type of business use classification on this sensitive site.
   
   

2. There are clear risks to the water supply and the vital aquifer that supplies the city with drinking water. Historical laws to protect the local water supply aimed to prevent risks to the area’s aquifer and this proposal is also contrary to their detailed provisions.
   
   

3. There will be unacceptable transport impacts to the surrounding roads, including road danger for all kinds of users and risks to health from air pollution.
   
   

4. Royal Mail is not a company that should be trusted to develop a site in a way that requires such a large number of realistically unenforceable conditions from statutory agencies.
   
   

As well as objecting, I would also like to express my support for alternative ways for this piece of land to be brought into productive and constructive use that is positive for the city and the local community alike.

I have visited the area to discuss ideas from local residents, and these include recreation, community managed small-scale offices and workshops, and restoration for nature.

All these potential uses would be a good way to manage publicly owned land in this location in a way that is fully compliant with national and local planning policies. Rejecting this application now would provide a real impetus to bring forward these more positive ideas in the near future.

1. Not an appropriate use of this land

Relevant parts of the NPPF

Paragraphs 185 and 186 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) are especially relevant to this application. These cover sensitive environmental and ecological sites and air pollution (with both including cumulative impacts). Paragraph 109, which covers minimising transport impacts, including reducing the need to travel with choices of location, and paragraphs 114-117 are also important as they cover road danger and highways impacts.

Relevant parts of the City Plan

I started by citing the NPPF because this policy framework also sets out that the primary way significant development sites should be chosen is through the plan-making process. In this case, the City Plan has not allocated this site to such use. Policy CP3 of the City Plan Part 1 allocated this site for 6,500 sqm of low-impact B1(a) office use and BI(b) research and development.

The City Plan process was extensive and looked in detail at suitable uses for the fringes of the city for good reason. With the downland already affected by road building, the need to minimise the extent of further development in this area is clear, and the City Plan process will have taken this into account in assigning lower impact uses and low intensity to this former farmland.

The proposal for a large logistics facility under the B8 storage and distribution use class fundamentally does not fall under an appropriate use within the City Plan and, assuming that the City Plan was properly adopted, also fails to comply with the NPPF.

For this reason alone, the application should be refused so that appropriate uses for the land can be proposed.

2. Risks to the water supply

The risks to water supplies from contamination are a particularly strong reason to prevent the proposed change of use and development on this land.

City Plan (3.169) describes how: “The chalk under the downland around the city is the aquifer or groundwater storage that supplies the city. It is therefore important that it is protected from any development or land use that could cause harm by polluting or affecting the water supply held in the chalk.”

Patcham Court Farm sits directly above the Brighton aquifer, which is crucial in maintaining a clean supply of drinking water for the city. The site of this proposed development is therefore in the highest rated groundwater protection zone for the city’s water supply.

At the well-attended public meetings I have been part of, this is one of the issues that has most exercised Patcham’s residents. This is to their credit as, while other issues the development would cause will affect their local environment directly, this risk would create serious harm to the wider city that they are determined to prevent.

The objection from Caroline Lucas includes statements from environmental groups - including the Brighton Downs Alliance and the Brighton Chalk Management Partnership - who are already concerned about the existing impacts of development in the area, including roads and farming, on the aquifer.

In addition, Caroline Lucas points out that this site is specifically named in the Brighton Corporation Water Act 1924 as of significance in relation to the aquifer and it should continue to be protected under this long-term provision. The subsequent 1931 Act also refers to Patcham, and it outlines byelaws for preventing the contamination of water accordingly. This historical legislation to protect the area's water supply does suggest that it would be entirely inappropriate and wrong for the LPA to consider over-development of this site outside of the classification in City Plan.

Importantly this risk posed by this development cannot be considered in isolation but as an unacceptable additional development on top of existing and cumulative impacts. Again, the choice of this site for lower impact uses and lower intensity in the City Plan will have taken into account the relation of this land to cumulative impacts from nearby development in a more holistic way and should have great weight in this aspect of the decision.

For this reason alone, the application should be refused so that unacceptable risks to the city’s water supply are avoided in a precautionary way.

3. Transport impacts will be higher than assessed so far

a) Road danger

I believe that this proposal will increase road danger for people in vehicles, on bikes and on foot or wheelchairs. The location of the site itself creates the majority of these likely impacts and therefore I do not believe that this risk can be adequately mitigated for this proposal.

I have visited the site with residents to observe its proximity to the slip roads around the A27 and its junction with the A23. I have seen the dangers that already exist for pedestrians in crossing Vale Avenue to reach the homes at 122-134 Vale Avenue, and the speeding traffic that affects the homes opposite and anyone walking or cycling on that road.

Looking at the difficulties faced by residents in trying to emerge safely from Church Hill or their homes right along Vale Avenue, I cannot see how a new site entrance for a) construction traffic or b) the proposed range of vehicles taking part in the proposed Royal Mail operations could be located safely here.

In addition, movements from the larger Royal Mail vehicles especially, are likely to prevent other vehicles from accessing and leaving the A27 via the slip roads, causing congestion.

Dangers from congestion and concerns about baseline data surveys.

National Highways has also expressed its concerns about traffic from this development creating delays on the slip road to the A27, and subsequent congestion, which carries its own dangers due to the blind hill on the approach to the junction (resident responses have also pointed this out).

The National Highways response was initially to object to the scheme, and the latest response from this agency asks for a range of conditions, including adherence to an extensive Travel Plan, which has recently been amended so that shifts start later than originally planned.

However, the most recent objection from Caroline Lucas has noted that the most recent updated transport assessment used baseline counts of existing traffic on the surrounding roads (the original was carried out in 2021 raising questions about low numbers during the pandemic) that were carried out on 8 and 9 March 2023, when there was significant snowfall affecting the area.

Caroline says: “The baseline figure being used by Mott MacDonald for its assessments cannot be treated as reliable and raises questions about the validity of the document as a whole.”

She also raises an important point about a recent and significant change in business practices by Royal Mail – namely the automatic redelivery policy, which means all parcels which can’t be delivered the first time will be attempted again, rather than collected by customers from a different location. This is clearly going to have an impact on journeys by van from the site, and yet does not seem to be included in the assessment of the site’s impact on the road network.

In addition, residents have recently identified what appears to be an error in the parking estimates, whereby the parking requirement given, at less than 100 vehicles, is much lower than what would be expected if less than half of close to 300 initial staff choose to drive. This clearly needs explaining, and if the answer given is a hope for extensive car sharing as a result of the Travel Plan, I would not find this a sufficient safeguard against very significant parking impacts in the area and consequent dangers.

It is important that all these major issues with the traffic assessment are rectified in a further document, which officers must request urgently from Royal Mail, and that National Highways must again be consulted. However, it seems clear that, if corrected, all these issues will once again show an unacceptable impact on traffic from the site at this location which, again, was reflected in the limited choice of uses for this site at the stage of adopting the City Plan.

For this reason I believe it is possible at this point to conclude from the existing work looking at transport impacts that this is not an appropriate proposal and should be refused.

Safe routes to the site for non-drivers

I also have concerns about the provision of safe routes to work for the staff whose workplace would move from the current city centre site (which is very well connected by train and bus and accessible by bicycle) to this proposed location.

It seems more than obvious that the majority of employees will be deterred from sustainable travel by the lack of safe and convenient routes and will therefore drive, and yet the transport assessment claims that a mode share for driving of under 50 per cent can be achieved.

Many people have no choice to drive, and the new location will be dramatically less inaccessible by bicycle than the current site, particularly as shifts will start during darkness for several months of the year. Those staff who do choose to travel by bike (for some people this is the only affordable travel option), will be facing much higher risks and I do not believe this is acceptable.

For other non-drivers who want to use public transport, options are also limited and include additional road danger. Residents and other objectors including Caroline Lucas have pointed out that bus stops are 300-500 metres from the site, and the walking routes for these relatively long distances are currently on narrow pavements and, on Church Hill, next to habitable rooms in dwellings close to the footway.

Closer to the site, even in the revised transport proposals, there are still no signalised crossings proposed on Vale Avenue to reach the site. These arrangements are both dangerous for the workers and disruptive for residents.

Residents have also set out failings in the baseline parking assessments. Getting these wrong is also a potential cause of road danger as, without capacity on local streets to safely park, employees are likely to leave cars in places that obstruct either the footway or sightlines at junctions, further adding to an overall unacceptable impact on road danger.

All these additional transport impacts and risks add further to the conclusion that this site is simply not an appropriate location for this development or proposed use, which is contrary to the NPPF and the adopted City Plan.

b) Air pollution

I am pleased that you have asked the developers to reference the updated 2021 WHO guidelines for PM10 and PM2.5 particulates in their reports, but even this fails to acknowledge that the WHO has also reduced its guideline limit for average annual NO2 from 40 μg/m3 to 10 μg/m3. (1)

The evidence for the health impacts of these pollutants is so strong that no council should approve a development whose own consultants show an increase in pollution above a baseline amount that already exceeds this level.

The revised air quality assessment dated September 2022 used only the background data from the Preston Park automated monitoring station in the defined local air quality management area (LAQM), choosing data up to 2020, to estimate background levels of pollution in this area. However, there are a number of significant differences between this area and that location in the centre of the city, some of which would reduce the estimates, but several would do the opposite.

Your officer noted in August 2023 that: “Following April 2023 correspondence it was our understanding that the consultant had agreed to carry out diffusion tube survey in Patcham (for at least six months), but this is not confirmed in either of the two June 2023 responses.”

The most recent LAQM Annual Status Report from Brighton and Hove City Council, published in 2023 and using data up to the end of 2022, shows that since 2020 overall regional traffic levels have risen. (2) There has been a larger increase in van travel and a smaller rise or even slight fall in car traffic (notably around Brighton station where potentially a reduced number of commuting trips by rail may have led to this).

(1) - https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/what-are-the-who-air-quality-guidelines
(2) - https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/environment/noise-pollution-and-air-quality/2023-air-quality-annual- status-report-asr

The most significant source of pollution for vulnerable households living near the proposed development is clearly the A27 and its major junction with the A23. National data on emissions for 2022 show that since 2020, while nitrogen oxide emissions have continued to drop (though at a lower rate of decrease) PM10 and PM2.5 particulate emissions have risen over these years, (3) and the latest Department for Transport statistics show that traffic volumes across the South East region have increased sharply since 2020, from 42.4 billion vehicle miles to 51.6 billion vehicle miles in 2022. (4)

Latest data also show that recent sharp rises in van traffic continue, with van miles up over 11 per cent compared with December 2019. It also shows that total traffic on A-roads has increased faster since the pandemic than on minor roads and, in the year to September 2023, has risen almost three times as fast as on minor roads. (5)

All this new evidence shows again that reliance only upon data to the unique year of 2020 and extrapolation from a city centre air pollution monitoring site is not appropriate to draw any conclusions about the health impact of traffic and pollution on local residents. This is a site which will be a focus for primarily diesel HGV and van traffic using the major road network soon after permission is given, including during the years of construction, and the impact needs to be assessed on this basis with the best evidence available.

Despite your officers’ requests, the developers have failed to carry out an adequate assessment of air pollution impacts. They have had every chance to do better. At Falmer, which also lies on the A27, there is a high quality academic research team carrying out automatic monitoring and research into local air pollution. I suggest that this data should be used, alongside diffusion tube monitoring of baseline traffic, so that a realistic estimate of the impact of recent and proposed traffic before any conclusions can be drawn on this vital issue for health.

The fact that the AQMA regime is not engaged is not relevant in the light of the proximity of the strategic road network and the clear evidence of health impacts at much lower concentrations of both NO2 and PM than the legislation covers. Not allowing health impacts from air pollution due to development is a general duty imposed by the NPPF.

The lack of adequate assessment and assurance on the question of harmful air pollution and health impacts means that the application should be rejected on these grounds alone.

3 - https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/emissions-of-air-pollutants/emissions-of-air-pollutants-in-the- uk-summary
4 - https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/regions
5 - https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/provisional-road-traffic-estimates-great-britain-october-2022-to-september-2023/provisional-road-traffic-estimates-great-britain-october-2022-to-september-2023

4. Royal Mail as a developer should not be given the benefit of the doubt when seeking to override the City Plan

Reading the responses and correspondence from statutory consultees to this application, I was struck by a pattern of initial concern and objection, leading to promises of significant restrictions on particular ways of operating and constructing the new facilities.

Severe limitations on future changes of use and further development of the types of business carried out here are clearly very necessary to limit the damage this development will cause. This includes the construction limits proposed by Southern Water and the very detailed and restrictive Travel Plan required by National Highways, as noted above.

It is legitimate for a planning authority to look at a proposal that carries such a high risk that it requires very extreme conditions to even be considered, and reject it, particularly bearing in mind that the starting point is a proposed use class and location that is contrary to the local plan.

The council should also take into account that there is in fact a very high practical likelihood that the site’s proposed uses will change and expand in the near future, most likely before the proposed development can even be completed.

Caroline Lucas points out in her most recent objection that:
“Royal Mail is currently in a state of flux, with the company unable to meet its universal service obligation to deliver letters on time, and haemorrhaging money at an alarming rate. I recognise that change within Royal Mail may be needed, and that the mail delivery office in North Road may no longer be fit-for purpose. However, Patcham Court Farm is an environmentally sensitive site, and it would be wrong for the Local Planning Authority to gamble on allowing a company in crisis to be custodian of such an important piece of land in the city.”

Planning authorities must be realistic when imposing conditions because, once a business is established on a site, planning authorities are very limited in their grounds to refuse amendments to conditions imposed on the original planning consent.

And there is no practical option to impose the sanction of removing the development if in future Royal Mail’s (or a successor’s) business changes and conditions are simply broken. Therefore it is a practical fact that by approving this proposal contrary to the City Plan, the council would open the door to a very real and very high future risk to the city, including its crucial water supply.

Realistically, the risks to the city are too large to be left in the hands of these future processes. The only way to protect the city from unacceptable impacts is to insist on sticking to the policies of the City Plan, refuse this application now and preserve the site for more appropriate uses.

In conclusion, I believe that the evidence you have is enough to conclude that this proposal is unsuitable for this sensitive site, and I very much hope that you will recommend against approving this application in the near future, based on the objections and evidence already received.

However, as new data and responses from consultee agencies and organisations continues to be posted on the council’s planning website, I will continue to discuss these with residents, and so I may submit further comments on the application if necessary.

Yours sincerely,

Siân Berry
Green Party MP candidate for Brighton Pavilion