The Local Plan and supporting documents show that Site BA1 will have many adverse impacts which have not been given adequate weight, especially as there may be alternative sites which do not suffer such impacts. (See objections to policy SP8 Housing.)

1 Development on Site BA1 will be very difficult to integrate properly with the rest of Baldock because the railway line is a physical barrier with few crossing points. In effect, the development of Site BA1, with the infrastructure that it must have, will create a separate settlement. Thus it contravenes paras. 4.100 to 4.103 of the Local Plan, it fails to conform to the vision articulated in para. 3.6 and it fails to maintain the existing settlement pattern as required by objective ENV1.

2. The scale of growth proposed for Baldock, most of it in site BA1, will have overwhelming negative effects on road traffic in and around Baldock, but these have not been assessed adequately in the Local Plan and the proposed mitigation measures are minimal and unlikely to be effective. The draft AECOM Local Transport Modelling Report of July this year only examines the existing situation, not the impact of proposed developments, and the one mitigation measure proposed for Baldock (a mini roundabout and signal optimisation at Whitehorse Street/Royston Road) is trivial.

The proposed link road between the A507 and A505, and the proposed southern link road between Wallington Road and Royston Road B656 (in the proposals for Sites BA3 and BA4), will divert some traffic away from the junction at Whitehorse Street/Royston Road which is a known problem (para. 13.29), but additional local traffic from Site BA1 and other Baldock development sites will nevertheless lead to a large net increase in traffic through this junction. NHDC implicitly accepts that a proportion of traffic from Site BA1 will pass through this junction (para. 4.179). A high proportion of trips from Site BA1 will be towards Hitchin and Letchworth both for work and other purposes (e.g. to the retail trading site east of Letchworth) and most of these will go via this junction and through the town centre conservation area. The Local Plan notes how interconnected these towns are (paras. 2.31, 4.27, 13.14) and that many residents will commute out (paras 4.25 and 4.26). Use of the link road to the A505 to go from from Site BA1 to Letchworth and Hitchin will involve a long round trip, and most residents will not do this. In any case this route includes another problem junction, at Letchworth Gate. Trips from Site BA1 to the large supermarket at the south end of Baldock High Street will add to traffic problems within the town.

Some mitigation of the traffic problems might be achieved by upgrading an alternative route through Baldock via Icknield Way and Norton Road, but this is also very difficult and highly contentious.

The deliverability and financial viability of the link road to the A505 is questionable, given the lack of detail especially about the new rail crossing that is required and especially if, as is likely, this has to be under the railway.

The increased traffic through Baldock will breach air quality standards, which the plan notes are already close to being exceeded (para. 9.28).

3. The site makes a significant contribution to the Green Belt (Housing and Green Belt Background Paper, para. 3.14). Using it, along with the other sites around the edge of Baldock, will negatively affect the character of the landscape and townscape. The land north of Bygrave Road is of particular concern because it has been assessed as having moderate to high landscape sensitivity (Land North of Baldock: Landscape Sensitivity Study, July 2013, para. 5.2).

4. 4. There is insufficient detail about the masterplan and the other site-specific requirements that will have to be met. The list of requirements is encouraging but more detail is needed about such matters as the location of infrastructure facilities and the timing of their provision, so that they are determined before developers start producing proposals.

Part of the infrastructure needed within site BA1 is additional car parking for the railway station, and land needs to be reserved for this as close as possible to the station. This is not mentioned.