Walsall Council is holding some public consultations on its plans to review the boundaries of the Great Barr Conservation Area, as indicated in the plan shown below.
At the moment, this area includes: Great Barr Hall and its lakes and  grounds, Merrion’s Wood, The Duckery, Great Barr Golf Club, Barr Beacon, Beacon Farm, Pinfold Lane, and Doe Bank Farm. The plans could see the Conservation Area drastically reduced so that it only consists of Great Barr Hall, The Duckery, and Merrion’s Wood area.

How to have your say!

Although this is being conducted by Walsall Council, it will effect people in Great Barr, and two of the consultations will be in Great Barr.
Walsall Council has produced a detailed report on the Conservation area, which can be found on Walsall Councils’s website here. 
Consultation on the Great Barr Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan

This includes links to PDFs of the plans, and the report, as well as a link to an online consultation form.
The deadline for submissions is Friday 11 October 2024. 

The two consultations in Great Barr will be held on October 2nd and 4th, as shown below.

• Wednesday October 2 at Great Barr Community Hub, off Chapel Lane, between 10am and 1pm.
• Friday 4 October at The Memorial Hall Chapel Lane, between 4pm and 7pm

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This consultation is a result of the new government’s proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework. This would require Councils to undertake a Green Belt review if they are not meeting their housing need. If these changes go ahead, Councils will be required to allocate enough land to meet their housing need under a new “standard method” of assessment.

Our friends at Green Liberal Democrats have published a review of these changes. This points out that although planning is often blamed for low house building in England, it is the reluctance of developers to build what the market needs rather than what makes them the most money, and their willingness to landbank, that is a more significant factor. There are examples of land-banking in Sandwell, where speculative property developers have obtained land but not built the developments they promised.

Any drive to increase house building should first concentrate on getting developers to build the backlog of approvals they have already obtained, which amounts to around one million homes, but not built, before opening up green space and Green Belt to developers. There needs to be a balanced policy, not one that favours greedy developers.

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