Stop SGC’s primary focus is to Stop the Selwood Garden Community development and the damage it will cause to the environment and the impact it will have on the local area. While we wait for the planning application for SGC to go live on the planning website we are encouraging our supporters to write to the members of the Mendip Planning Board to inform them of their objections to the plan. To help we have compiled what we believe to be the 8 main reasons to oppose this colossal development.
Stop SGC believes that while Frome needs houses they should be the right houses in the right place; supported by urgent improvements to the local infrastructure (schools, medical facilities, local employment etc). They should also be built to high standards, and not be more of the same poorly insulated, poorly designed, box houses that will be blight on the landscape and need retrofitting in ~five years.
There is and has been a lot of development recently concentrated on Frome. We have just had Edmunds Park, 450 homes built on a greenfield site, it bears mentioning that a school and other amenities were promised for this site which have not materialised.
There are currently a total of five Frome sites with consent for house building – among these is the contentious Saxonvale development in the town centre. Altogether these sites could yield 970 homes, more than enough to cover the shortfall for the whole of Mendip for the next five years.
Further to this there are four more sites under discussion, totalling another 290 homes. Two of these the FR3a development and Sandy’s Hill Lane are physically linked to the proposed SGC site and Stop SGC has been actively involved in objecting to the proposals for these sites.
Comprehensive information on development in Frome can be found here.
SGC stands in solidarity with other campaigns, such as the Friends of Easthill Field, Broadway Community Gardens, Save River Frome Pathway and Mayday Saxonvale, we CAN safeguard our vital community green spaces, we CAN uplift the voices of local people, we CAN insist on high quality, extensive solutions to the housing crisis. And we must.
Stop SGC 