Bloor Homes have submitted a planning application for up to 450 homes on the land east of Roundways - stretching from the railway line in south, all the way along St. Anne's Drive and Roundways to Woodside Road to the north.

In a separate pre-application, Edward Ware Homes are proposing up to 900 homes on the land around Frog Lane - joining the proposed Bloor Homes site at Woodside Road and extending to Frog Lane in the north.

Therefore the proposed total is up to 1,350 new homes.

Please see this section for further details on the proposals.

No, we do not believe so.

We think there are compelling arguments as to why these developments should not take place. Please see this section for details of the reasons we think these developments are unacceptable.

Please see this section for details on how to object and the reasons that we are objecting.

South Glos Council wants to provide housing for its current and future population in a joined-up, strategic way.

It has prepared a draft Local Plan which allocates housing for the next 15 years. It has done so without allocating these sites at Coalpit Heath, therefore these developments are speculative applications not supported by South Gloucestershire Council. Please see this section for further details on the draft Local Plan.

Please see this section of the website for how to oppose these applications and for our own reasons for objecting.

The Government has recently loosened the definition of Green Belt, allowing some of it to be classified as “grey belt” in order to make it more acceptable for development.

Developers will argue that the land east of Coalpit Heath is grey belt. We don't believe it is.

Please see this section for a more detailed analysis of Green Belt / grey belt.

Any former plans for these sites fell away when the former Joint Spatial Plan was abandoned in 2019.

During the new Local Plan process, South Glos Council examined these sites and decided to not put them forward for development in the new Local Plan.

Therefore these new applications are speculative and do not conform to existing or proposed South Glos policy.

Please see this section for further details on the planning history of these sites and the new Local Plan.

At the Edward Ware Homes consultation event, the applicants were telling residents that the South Glos Local Plan only contains 80% of the housing requirement that is needed for it to pass public examination.

We believe this to be incorrect. Edward Ware Homes are referring to Bristol's unmet housing need and consider that South Glos should accept some of it. We disagree.

The draft Local Plan calculates South Gloucestershire’s housing target using the Government’s Standard Method formula and allocates sufficient sites to meet that target. South Gloucestershire Council has considered Bristol’s unmet housing need, as it has a legal duty to do, but it does not consider that this unmet need can be delivered within South Glos in a sustainable way within the plan period of 15 years. The Council has delivered evidence to that effect to the Planning Inspectorate and expects this evidence will be accepted.

Please see this section for further details on the new Local Plan.

South Gloucestershire Council has considered Bristol’s unmet housing need in its new Local Plan, as it has a legal duty to do, but it does not consider that this unmet need can be delivered within South Glos in a sustainable way within the plan period of 15 years. The Council has delivered evidence to that effect to the Planning Inspectorate and expects this evidence will be accepted.

Please see this section for further details on the new Local Plan.

Local authorities like South Glos have a duty to demonstrate that they have approved sufficient planning applications to meet their housing requirements for the next 5 years.

When local authorities cannot demonstrate a 5 year land supply it is easier for developers to get speculative applications (like these) approved because they will claim the delivery of their housing will help the authority move towards its 5 year target.

South Glos cannot currently demonstrate a 5 year land supply - but we believe there are mitigating factors:

• Changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in December 2024 changed the calculation method for housing land supply, causing South Glos (alongside many other local authorities) to demonstrate supply against raised target. This caused South Glos to drop from being able to demonstrate more than 5 years of supply to fewer than 5 years.
   
• South Glos is coming to the end of its current plan - the sites identified in that plan have now largely been built out making it harder to get strategic new housing applications approved. Approval of the new Local Plan, which we expect to happen very soon, will formally allocate many new strategic sites making it easier for South Glos to meet its targets. Even in draft form the new Local Plan demonstrates the direction of travel for the council. We would like to see developers working with the council to develop those proposed strategic sites rather than submitting unwanted and speculative applications like these.

There is no formal definion of a town, so we need to look at settlements to see how they've been categorised from perspectives like their population sizes and the services and ameneties they provide.

The population of the built up part of Coalpit Heath is around 2,000 people - almost certainly not large enough to be categorised as a town. But we would argue that there is contiguous development and no separation between the built up areas of Coalpit Heath, Frampton Cotterell Winterbourne: therefore the whole built up area of Coalpit Heath, Frampton Cotterell and Winterbourne should be treated as a single settlement for Green Belt / grey belt purposes.

Which leads to the question: Is the settlement of Coalpit Heath / Frampton Cotterell / Winterbourne a town?

Population

The citypopulation.de website is a useful tool for comparing the population of built up areas because it uses census data to estimates populations for built up areas - not just along ward or parish boundaries.

It agrees with our opinion that Coalpit Heath, Frampton Cotterell and Winterbourne constitute a single built up area. 

According to this website the estimated 2024 population of this built up area is 14,924 residents. (It omits the new developments at Blackberry Park, but for like-for-like comparison purposes we'll use their figure)

We can compare this population size of 14,924 residents to other local towns.

This means, in population terms, the combined settlement of Frampton Cotterell, Coalpit Heath and Winterbourne is about half the size of Yate, almost exactly the same size as Thornbury and about twice the size of Chipping Sodbury.

Yate, Thornbury and Chipping Sodbury are all regarded as towns for Green Belt purposes in the 2022 West of England Combined Authority Strategic Green Belt Assessment. We believe the combined settlement of Frampton Cotterell, Coalpit Heath and Winterbourne should be too.

In addition to local comparitors it's useful to look at the analysis of other authorities.

Solihull Metropolitan District Council is also producing a Local Plan for its area, and, in their 2025 Draft Solihull Rural Settlement Hierarchy Assessment, have recently proposed designating “town” status to a combination of three of their villages - Knowle, Dorridge and Bentley Heath (KDBH). Their analysis determines that KBDH, with a population of 19,300 should be designated a town.

Their research also references the Office for National Statistics opinion on population size - published in their Towns and Cities, Characteristics of Built Up Areas, England and Wales: Census 2021 document:

^{ONS Settlement Categories}

The Solihull research also references the House of Commons Library (HoCL) briefing paper on City and Town classification of Constituencies and Local Authorities:

^{HoCL Settlement Categories}

Both of these items of research confirm our view that, just like Solihull's Knowle, Dorridge and Bentley Heath settlements, our contiguous settlements of Frampton Cotterell, Coalpit Heath and Winterbourne are a small town - but a town nonetheless.

Therefore we believe the combined settlement of Frampton Cotterell, Coalpit Heath and Winterbourne should be regarded as a single town for the Green Belt / grey belt test.

Services and Amenities

The same Solihull 2025 Draft Solihull Rural Settlement Hierarchy Assessment researches the sorts of services and ameneties which would be expected to be provided by a city, a town or a village.

It finds the proposed Solihull town town of Knowle, Dorridge and Bentley Heath (KDBH( provides the following services and amenities which, in the opinion of that council, are sufficient to categorise that area as a town:

• Large supermarket
• Secondary school
• Higher education / sixth form
• Comparison shopping opportunities
• Dentist
• Hotel
• Pharmacy
• Post Office
• Library
• Church
• GP Surgery
• Primary School
• Cafe
• Restaurant 
• Pub
• Small supermarket / convenience store
• Community hall

Again, the combined area of Frampton Cotterell, Coalpit Heath and Winterbourne looks remarkably similar - with only a Hotel missing when compared to Solihull's KDBH, and with examples of most services and amenities being repeated many times over:

We believe this list is further evidence why the combined settlement of Frampton Cotterell, Coalpit Heath and Winterbourne should be regarded as a town for the Green Belt / grey belt test.