Wixams Residents’ Meeting – May 2024

by | May 30, 2024 | Residents' Meetings

It takes a lot of work to put together meetings for the public, and finding a date to get LSP Developments and Mayor Tom Wootton in the room at the same time needed some effort. It was worth it though because we had a bumper evening for residents, with a lot of news shared, and opportunities for people to ask questions of developers and our local politicians.

The meeting was introduced by our group’s chair, Leon Staszak, and he started off the proceedings by highlighting the importance of bringing people together in the room. This was the fourth Wixams Residents’ Meeting and the previous meetings had led to meaningful actions and change in Wixams:

  • At the first meeting, in April 2023, we heard from the former Mayor, Dave Hodgson, where he talked about the work done so far to try and get the surgery commissioned. The Bedfordshire, Luton & Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board (BLMK ICB) had previously announced they were no longer able to support the Wixams surgery and residents were frustrated. At the meeting Mayor Dave and Cllr Graeme Coombes both explained that residents needed to take action and lobby the ICB to get them to reverse their decision.
  • The next meeting was held in August and, after a good response from the community, when we asked the ICB to attend they said yes. Felicity Cox, BLMK ICB Chief Executive, spoke to residents about the funding issues faced and the work being done to get a surgery for Wixams. It was a very productive meeting and residents were certainly not going to take no for an answer. A lot of good ideas were put forward to Felicity and her team and they were probably taken aback by the strong response from the community. This meeting led to the creation of the Wixams Surgery Action Group which has been leading the charge to try and get the surgery commissioned.
  • In December we ran a meeting to talk about maintenance fees and service contracts. Rob Allan led the meeting and talked about the reasons why people are paying fees and options to challenge contracts and save money. Rob has now set up www.wixamsservices.co.uk to help people find ways to reduce these fees and other services such as a business directory which we can all benefit from.

Table of Contents

Town Centre Updates from LSP Developments

Wixams Town Centre Indicative Site Plan

The plans for our town centre have been in the works for a few years now and have changed somewhat over that time. Ed Sutton, Managing Director of LSP Developments, handed out boards to the audience with the latest versions of their indicative plans as shown above and talked about some of the changes.

  • The food store is now likely to be larger than previously planned, now to be over 3,000 m² (33,000 ft²). Sainsbury’s are still hoping to win the contract to run the store and a representative was at the meeting to answer any questions, though no one had any for him directly.
  • There will be a central car park for the town centre servicing all the amenities, including the supermarket. The car park will be landscaped and include EV charging stations.
  • The surgery has been moved and is next to a health block/hub which should include a vets and dentists. The new location of the health hub means it might be possible it can be built and available to use earlier than the rest of the town.
  • A cafe is positioned in front of the supermarket and creates an entrance across to the community centre.
  • There are to be 10 retail units in the town centre and LSP have been receiving requests every week for local businesses looking to rent a unit.
  • A pub is planned which will be for multiple uses. A place to go for coffee in the morning, a bistro for lunch and craft brewery for the evening.
  • A care home was already in the plans but LSP were asked to include a block of retirement apartments. These are additional to the original plans.

The town centre can only go ahead once some changes to the S106 agreement have been made. Ed made it clear that ‘due process’ must be followed, so at this stage LSP Developments are unable to submit a planning application. They hope to be in the position to do this in the autumn this year. They expect the application will take at least 6 months to go through all the stages, the delivery time will be around 1.5 years, so the completion of the town centre is expected toward the end of 2026.

News from Mayor Tom Wootton

The Mayor of Bedford Borough gave an update on some news for the council:

  • The developers have to pay a contribution of around £20m towards the railway station and a contract between Bedford Borough Council and Network Rail must be signed before 29th July or this money will be lost. The Mayor highlighted that they will make sure this happens. There is also still a funding gap at the council of around £20m left from the previous administration. The current Conservative ruling party will be putting forward a motion to full council in the coming months, they have no reason to believe it won’t be approved as it’s well known in the council how important the station is to Wixams. The development of the station will continue as is with an expected delivery date of August 2026. If the Universal Studios development goes ahead they will want a larger station for Wixams and will bring significant financial contributions. However, this would likely delay the station further, though Universal would want the station operational well before they planned opening date of Jan 2030.
  • The Mayor spoke about Universal Studios and how important it is for the area due to the employment opportunities.
  • A resident asked the Mayor if the funding for the Wixams surgery is ring-fenced from the £9 million the council approved earlier this year. He said that it wasn’t but that they had seen there is a significant need for investment in primary healthcare facilities in the borough and they will likely end up voting to spend more money next year. He gave his assurance that the money for the Wixams surgery is there.
  • The Oasis swimming pool in Bedford has now been re-opened.
  • The River Festival is going ahead this year.
  • There will be a parade in Bedford for Armed Forces day.

S106 Agreement Modification

A Map from the Application Showing Some of the Locations for Sports and Leisure Facilities

There is an open public consultation to consider a set of changes to the S106 Agreement for sports and leisure facilities for the rest of Wixams. We covered this topic and spoke about the proposed changes:

  • A large number of facilities are yet to be built in Wixams and these are paid for from contributions made by the developers, L&Q Estates. The S106 Agreement for Wixams was made in 2006 and includes, sports, leisure, retail, healthcare, schools, commercial and employment facilities. They’re building a town from nothing and the cost to build the facilities is generated from the sale of homes.
  • There have been two set of changes to the agreement so far, one in 2015 and one in 2021. These were to meet funding gaps, mainly due to the developer contributions not being index linked, and the changes led to two primary schools being merged into one, a loss of some recycling facilities, a loss of business incubator units for startups, the removal of the planned retail units in villages 2 and 4 and more.
  • The current proposals look to remove more of the planned facilities including a reduction of the planned tennis courts, a reduction of the number of football pitches, giving two pitches to the Wixams Academy and allowing the school to rent them back to the community for a profit, extra space for allotments and the addition of a parkour course as a teen facility.

We highlighted some concerns with these proposals:

  • There has been no prior engagement with the community to find out what residents actually want or need. Neither the councils nor the developers have carried out a survey. The proposals are partly based on a report by Bedfordshire Rural Communities Charity (BedsRCC) which uses standards but no survey data at all.
  • This is the second open consultation for this set of proposed changes. Last year the councils wrote to all residents in Wixams to let them know, they have then worked with the developers to make changes and this time they only wrote to those who responded to the last proposals. There is an open consultation to change the plans for our town and the councils have only informed around 60 people.
  • There has been no public consultation event. Last year we wrote to Central Beds Council to ask them to engage with the community to let them know of the proposals, they refused. There was an event held by the Wixams Parish Council at our request but due to it being short notice not many people were aware, so attendance was low. No public event is planned for this consultation period.
  • The information in the application is confusing and potentially misleading. One document outlines to changes being proposed but doesn’t factor in the changes in 2015 and 2021. Whilst most of the information seems to be there, to fully understand it means reviewing other documents from previous applications.
  • We asked the council to publish some help guidance, to put the proposed changes into layman’s terms. Jon Shortland, Chief Officer for Planning, Infrastructure and Economic Growth, has stated that the department doesn’t have capacity to publish this. However, the planners have been meeting and working with the developers for more than 4 years on these proposed changes and a guidance page would take only around 2 hours to put together (we’re doing it ourselves instead).
  • For a number of years there have been requests from residents for a skate park in Wixams, in the 2021 Residents’ survey 15% of respondents asked for a skatepark to be prioritised. Yet in these proposals there’s not a skatepark but a parkour course, something that there’s no evidence there’s a need for.
  • There is no evidence to underpin the majority of changes being proposed, meaning the developers are asking to spend millions on facilities we haven’t asked for and without any evidence.

We recommend that residents in Wixams object to this application and ask that the developers engage with the community to find out what facilities residents need. A guidance page with full instructions on how to respond to this application is available here.

The deadline for comments has now passed

Pedestrian Crossings News

Our group has been campaigning for new pedestrian crossings for a long time. Recently Cllr Graeme Coombes announced that two new crossings would be installed in Wixams in the current financial year. It is hoped they will be in place by September but will need to go to public consultation first.

At the meeting Cllr Coombes spoke about these crossings and announced the good news that two more crossings are planned for the 2025-26 financial year:

Green Lane School Keep Clear Proposal

Recently a new working group was established to look at the congestion issues on Green Lane at school drop off and pick up times. This group first met in May and a number of suggestions were made looking for ways to improve the situation. A proposal from the Bedford Borough Council highways teams has been put together and first shown at the residents’ meeting. The feedback seemed generally positive, though a concern about impacts onto side streets such as Thistle Lane was raised. Any proposal will go forward to public consultation before it can be implemented so nearby residents will get an opportunity to respond.

They are proposing to install School Keep Clear markings on the school side of the road. According to the highways officer this is because:

  • In not placing restriction on the side of the houses, they will not inconvenience the residents.
  • Installing restrictions on one side of the road only will allow some parental parking, meaning that the road is not completely open which would result in higher speeds.
  • Having the restriction on one side only will mean that this side is kept clear allowing easier ingress and egress for the school buses.
  • Allowing parking opposite the school will prevent the need to anyone to drive on / over the footway.

In order to address some of the other points raised at the meeting, they are proposing that:

  • The School Keep Clear markings continue in to the school access in order to prevent parents from parking and blocking access to the car park.
  • The restrictions will be in place between 7am and 5pm each day. This allows for a consistent approach and keeps the road clear when there are children attending breakfast clubs and after school activities.

The highways officer notes that unlike double yellow lines, School Keep Clear markings can be enforced using ANPR cameras going forward (as is the case outside Lakeview School). It should be noted however that they do not have funds available for the installation of enforcement cameras at this time.

Contact Details

If you have concerns or comments about any of the topics discussed above you should contact your elected representative or parish council. The contact details for all elected representatives are below.

Bedford Borough Council

Central Bedfordshire Council