This application has attracted over 1,500 objections.

Here are some selected extracts from notable objections.

"The information on which you are being asked to make a decision is simplistic and inadequate and yet the information that has been submitted clearly demonstrates the landscape impact on this part of Bath and the WHS is unacceptable.

I suggest this application is a litmus test for future applications around the perimeter of the city that engages with the AONB and WHS. I believe the Council must ask for a much more rigorous and committed level of information for these sites as suggested by Bath Preservation Trust and others."

"For several years it has been clear that the building of large numbers of additional houses to the south of Bath would put massive additional pressure on road traffic in our city, particularly in Odd Down and Combe Down.

Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Highways Department highlighted the fact that while around 300 ‘or so’ dwellings could be accommodated on the road network, the effects of 450 units would cause ‘severe’ disruption to the network in the south of Bath. This would lead to long tailbacks and increased fume emission.

The Highways Department has asked the developers on several occasions to carry out more detailed ‘Vissim’ modelling on several critical junctions. So far the developers have not done this. Increased road traffic poses threats to human health.

Furthermore during the pandemic we have all recognised the importance of accessing green space to our physical and mental wellbeing. The building of additional homes at Sulis Down will impinge upon precious green space that currently enjoys very high public access and usage. It would entail the destruction of over 70 mature trees for the new Spine Road, the destruction of bat roosting sites at Sulis Manor and the ruination of nesting habitat for a significant number of breeding pairs of skylarks."

"The updated transport assessment recently submitted by the applicant does not address the issues that face our parishioners. The assessment does not directly measure any queuing times or queue lengths at any of the junctions. Therefore it doesn’t measure the effect of the additional houses on the already heavy queuing traffic on the A367 at peak times especially the mornings.

Rat running in all villages bordering the A367, especially through the village of Englishcombe, is already a significant issue and forms the majority of complaints by parishioners over many years. The dangerous nature of the lanes has resulted in frequent (non-fatal) accidents almost always involving ‘rat-running’ vehicles. – the additional houses will only escalate the problem."

Englishcombe Parish Council

Wera Hobhouse, MP for Bath

"We are very surprised to see the suggestion that the development would have a minimal effect on traffic flows locally. Anyone who has any knowledge of the site will know that there is huge congestion with long tailbacks coming into Bath in the morning and leaving in the evening. The extra vehicles will simply add to the tailback to a much greater extent than suggested. Further traffic also will hinder access and egress from the busy Park and Ride site. Furthermore as local Parish Councils have pointed out there will also be a greatly increased tendency for vehicles to try to find a “rat run” along nearby lanes causing nuisance and danger on rural roads."

Campaign to Protect Rural England

"The Board remains of the view that it has not been demonstrated that the exceptional circumstances required by paragraph 183 of the NPPF exist to justify a further 290 homes (on top of the 171 already permitted) on a site which is allocated for ‘around 300 dwellings’."

Cotswold National Landscape

"Avon Gardens Trust strongly objects to this planning application, because of the harm that it will cause to the setting of a locally listed heritage asset, Sulis Manor, and associated garden, and the irreparable damage it will cause to more than 80 trees that should be protected by their current preservation orders."

Avon Gardens Trust

"The proposed development is not in the public interest, it is clearly not ‘mixed use’ as the policymakers intended, is car dependent and is unsustainable. According to the NPPF rules this planning application should be rejected purely on traffic considerations alone. The development will be ‘Car dependant’ and will severely impact the highway network in the South of Bath.."

South Stoke Parish Council

"The consultants claim that changes in traffic flows into Bath on the A367:“will not adversely impact the roundabout or its capacity to safely accommodate transport users.” We are dismayed by this attempted obfuscation and sleight of hand. First, we cannot understand what can be meant by anything “impact[ing] the roundabout.” We have no concern that, once a driver reaches the roundabout in their turn, they will find anything there other than the roundabout as it has always been! There is no expectation that anything would “impact” the structure as a means of controlling the traffic flow. Has anyone ever suggested otherwise? If not, the consultant’s supposed conclusion adds, and means, nothing.

Secondly, and following on from that, we cannot conceive what might be meant by the roundabout’s “capacity to safely accommodate transport users.” We find it a bizarre thing to refer to, bordering on its being meaningless.

The assessment does not directly measure any queuing times or queue lengths at any of the junctions on the A367 south of the Odd Down roundabout. Therefore it does not credibly model the effect of the additional houses on the already heavy queuing traffic on the A367 at peak times, especially the mornings.

Rat running in all villages bordering the A367 is already a significant issue –these additional houses will, by inducing increased congestion along the A367 towards Bath, only escalate the problem.

Dunkerton & Tunley Parish Council

Andrew Grant, Leading Landscape Architect

"The updated transport assessment recently submitted by the applicant does not address the issues that face our parishioners. The assessment does not directly measure any queuing times or queue lengths at any of the junctions. Therefore it doesn’t measure the effect of the additional houses on the already heavy queuing traffic on the A367 at peak times especially the mornings. Bath and North East Council themselves state in their 'Local Plan options consultation' document that 'The city suffers from significant traffic congestion. 75% of people driving to work in Bath do so from outside of the city resulting in heavy congestion on those key corridors into Bath”. One of these key corridors is the A367.

This in turn means that the resulting increase in rat running through villages such as Camerton is not captured. Rat running in all villages bordering the A367 is already a significant issue –these additional houses will only escalate the problem."

Camerton Parish Council

Combe Hay Parish Council

"We can only repeat that what is (and always has been) required is a scaled back development which accords with the democratically drawn up local plan and which incorporates good local infrastructure facilitating a shift away from car dependency. Somehow what we are being presented with here is an overdevelopment far in excess of local plan requirements with virtually no community facilities that is almost totally dependent on car use."