Nottinghamshire County Council has warned that Rushcliffe Borough Council’s Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) on the “East of Gamston/North of Tollerton Development” still leaves too many unanswered questions about how people will move safely around the site, how local roads and villages will be protected from extra traffic, and how key pieces of infrastructure will actually be paid for and delivered.
In a detailed response to Rushcliffe’s draft Development Framework Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) for the 4,000-home “sustainable urban extension” – currently out to consultation – the County Council says it welcomes the principle of a framework, but raises significant concerns on transport, flood risk, education, waste facilities and the timing and funding of infrastructure.
The Gamston / Tollerton site has been earmarked for major growth for more than a decade. It was first allocated in the Rushcliffe Local Plan Part 1: Core Strategy, adopted in 2014, as a strategic urban extension with around 4,000 homes, 20 hectares of employment land and new schools, accessed from the A52 and integrated with West Bridgford and Nottingham. That allocation is now carried forward into the Greater Nottingham Strategic Plan as Policy 31, which assumes thousands of homes coming forward on the site between now and the mid-2040s.
Rushcliffe’s new SPD is intended to turn those long-standing policies into a detailed, parcel-by-parcel framework for Tollerton Airfield and surrounding land, setting out where schools, parks, roads, footpaths, shops and other facilities should go. But the County Council – which is the local highway authority, the lead local flood authority and the education and waste authority – has told Rushcliffe that the draft document “does not yet go far enough” to give confidence that the development will be safe, sustainable and properly serviced.
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The most serious criticism is reserved for transport and movement. The County Council points out that, despite the scale of the scheme, there is still “no comprehensive transport assessment covering the allocated site and supporting the proposals in the SPD”. Without that work, it says, it is impossible to judge whether the proposed internal layout and external links will work for walking, cycling, buses and cars.
Officers argue that national planning policy now expects “vision-led” transport strategies which prioritise walking and cycling first, then public transport, with development designed from the outset around those modes. They say any masterplan for Gamston / Tollerton should be underpinned by such a strategy and a full, multi-modal transport assessment before the SPD is finalised – not left to be hashed out at later planning application stages.
A key sticking point is how the new community will connect safely to existing Gamston and West Bridgford across the A52. The County Council says the draft SPD “does not adequately address the need for safe and improved pedestrian and cycle links” to the existing suburbs, despite this being a specific requirement in the emerging Greater Nottingham Strategic Plan. It notes that there is currently no controlled crossing where the main east–west greenway is shown and warns that relying on the existing public right of way and at-grade crossings is neither safe nor realistic once thousands of new residents are living on the site.
Crucially, the authority complains that a pedestrian and cycle bridge over the A52 – an idea that has been “discussed on many occasions during the preparation of the masterplan” – is not mentioned in the SPD at all. County highways officers say they currently consider new grade-separated crossings necessary for both safety and connectivity and want the masterplan to make explicit provision for such links, along with a clear diagram of off-site routes towards Gamston, West Bridgford, the proposed Park & Ride and Nottingham city centre.
The County Council is also worried that the SPD largely pushes decisions about off-site mitigation and detailed crossing design back to individual planning applications. It argues that those strategic choices should be settled upfront, with robust equalisation arrangements and clearly defined trigger points so that crucial infrastructure is delivered when it is actually needed, not years later when problems have already emerged.
Traffic impacts on neighbouring villages are another major concern. The County’s response says Bassingfield and Tollerton are at real risk of becoming “rat runs” for drivers trying to cut through between the new estate, the A52 and local routes. To avoid this, officers argue that the SPD should start from the assumption that Tollerton Lane will be “severed” to general through-traffic at its midpoint, with only buses, pedestrians and cyclists allowed to pass between the site and Tollerton village. They also call for early-stage traffic-calming and mitigation measures around both villages to be identified and costed as part of the core delivery strategy, not treated as optional extras.
On the internal layout, the County Council says the draft street hierarchy is confused and under-specifies how the main routes will function. Given the scale of the development and the role of the central loop road in carrying buses and most car traffic, officers argue that the “secondary” route in the SPD is, in reality, a primary street and should be designed to that standard – including minimum carriageway widths of 6.2–6.5 metres, segregated cycle tracks, and extra width near schools, local centres and open spaces to accommodate inevitable on-street parking. They stress that busy routes serving schools and centres cannot be designed as shared-surface streets and that cars should not be allowed to park across cycle routes or block key pedestrian corridors.
The County is also pressing Rushcliffe to be more explicit about the role of public transport. Its comments say the SPD must reflect recent changes to Nottingham City Transport’s network in the area, including the withdrawal of some routes and the renumbering of others, and warn that references to specific services such as the former 33 and 5/7 are already out of date. Instead, the County wants the document to align with its wider public transport strategy and to be clear that a site-wide Public Transport Strategy will be required, setting out how frequent, reliable bus links will be provided from the earliest phases of development.
The response calls for bus stops to be within 400 metres of all homes, for indicative stop locations and turning facilities to be agreed before the first planning application is decided, and for a “bus gate” on Tollerton Lane that gives priority to buses and emergency vehicles while discouraging through-traffic in private cars. It also suggests strengthening the SPD’s wording on travel plans so that new residents and employees are offered concrete incentives – such as free or discounted bus passes – to get into the habit of travelling by bus from day one.
Another flashpoint is the long-talked-about Gamston Park & Ride. The County Council says previous local plans and transport strategies have treated a Park & Ride at this location as a “core response” to traffic growth on the A52, but the SPD describes it only as an aspiration to be tested through future transport work. County officers want stronger wording making clear that the Gamston development will be expected to contribute towards a Park & Ride, on the grounds that such a facility would directly benefit the new community by taking car trips off the wider network.
Flood risk and drainage are another area where the County Council believes the SPD needs to be tougher. Tollerton Lane has suffered a series of serious flooding events in recent years, leading to formal Section 19 flood investigation reports in 2019 and 2020. The County’s response notes this “significant and well-documented history of flooding”, including internal property flooding, and insists that both the SPD and any future flood risk assessments must take account of the high existing risk and the potential impact of extra hard surfaces and drainage changes on downstream areas.
It sets out a detailed list of minimum expectations for drainage design across the site, including proof of a viable outfall in line with the national drainage hierarchy, limits on run-off to greenfield rates, capacity for at least a 1-in-100-year storm plus climate change allowance, and demonstration that exceedance flows can be contained within the development without flooding homes. Sustainable drainage systems should, it says, be primarily above-ground to deliver biodiversity and amenity benefits, and the long-term ownership and maintenance of all drains, ponds and swales must be clearly defined before construction starts. The County also warns that permeable paving within adoptable highways cannot be relied on over the long term and that “positive outfalls” will be required for highway drainage.
On community infrastructure, the County Council backs the principle of providing a new secondary school and two primary schools on the site but says their delivery must be “highly prioritised”. It wants the secondary school site in the northern part of the allocation to be re-graded, plateaued and fully serviced at no cost to the authority as early as possible in the construction programme, so that a new school can open before existing secondary capacity in the area is overwhelmed. It also argues that the two primary schools, which sit in different ownership parcels, must be delivered consecutively, with the first opening alongside the secondary school and the second only coming forward once the first is built and occupied.
Education officers stress that school design cannot be treated in isolation from the wider street network. In their view, the SPD must recognise that primary schools typically generate heavy short-stay parking demand – often around half of pupil numbers – as well as intense walking and cycling activity at drop-off and pick-up times. Roads around schools will therefore need to be wider, with generous footways and segregated cycle routes, and there should be clear strategies for short-stay parking and shared use of nearby car parks to avoid dangerous congestion on surrounding streets.
Beyond schools, the County also uses its response to press for a clearer commitment to library provision and household waste facilities. Given the scale of Gamston / Tollerton, it proposes a new “community library” within the main community building on site, supported by extra stock and services at West Bridgford and Cotgrave libraries. It wants the SPD to state explicitly that the community library will be co-located in the hall and delivered on a peppercorn-rent basis with volunteers involved in day-to-day running.
Waste officers warn that the current West Bridgford household waste recycling centre on Rugby Road already suffers from significant queues at peak times and cannot be expanded because there is no additional land available. With thousands of new residents expected, they say the borough’s existing recycling capacity “will be unable to satisfy” future demand and argue that a new household waste recycling centre is “therefore needed”. Their preferred location is within the Gamston East allocation itself, as part of the employment area with direct access to the strategic road network. They suggest the SPD should identify up to 1 hectare of land for this use and list a new recycling centre as a specific, standalone infrastructure requirement rather than bundling it under a generic “other community facilities” heading.
The County’s heritage and archaeology teams broadly welcome the SPD’s recognition of the site’s history, particularly the network of listed pillboxes associated with the former wartime airfield and the intention to retain key elements of the runways and wider military landscape. However, they recommend that the Gamston Canal is explicitly treated as a non-designated heritage asset and that the plan’s heritage mapping is expanded to show archaeological data from the Nottinghamshire Historic Environment Record, not just listed buildings. They also want the SPD to be clearer that all development parcels will require geophysical surveys and trial trenching, with mitigation designed in from the outset and, ideally, a more comprehensive archaeological evaluation of the whole site to inform the final masterplan.
Public health officers, meanwhile, note that the draft SPD is framed around the Nottinghamshire Spatial Planning and Health Framework and that it rightly emphasises walkable neighbourhoods, green spaces and access to services. But they say it should go further by explicitly requiring a Rapid Health Impact Assessment for major planning applications on the site, to ensure health considerations are consistently embedded as the scheme evolves.
Underlying all of these topic-specific comments is a wider worry about how the many different pieces of infrastructure – from road junctions and bus services to schools, parks, drainage and waste sites – will be coordinated, funded and delivered over what is likely to be a 20-plus-year build-out. The SPD proposes a site-wide Infrastructure Delivery Plan (IDP) and an overarching “Framework” Section 106 agreement to set out who pays for what and when. The County Council supports this in principle, but says it is “essential” that the IDP is drawn up and agreed before any planning applications for parts of the site are determined, so that trigger points, costs and delivery responsibilities are locked in.
Highways officers also make clear that they expect most transport infrastructure – from new junctions to upgraded cycleways and crossings – to be delivered “in kind” by developers through legal agreements, rather than via cash contributions that the County would then have to spend. They warn that the authority does not have spare funding to plug any gaps if viability problems emerge and say the SPD should explicitly state that, in extremis, the scale of development itself may have to be reduced if the full package of necessary mitigation proves unaffordable.
The County Council’s response does not oppose the principle of development at East of Gamston / North of Tollerton, which is firmly embedded in both local and strategic plans. Instead, it seeks to tighten and strengthen the SPD so that it truly provides a “vision-led” blueprint for one of Nottinghamshire’s largest ever urban extensions – one that delivers homes, schools and jobs without overloading local roads, worsening flood risk or leaving key pieces of infrastructure to chance. How far Rushcliffe Borough Council chooses to amend the draft document in light of those concerns will be watched closely by local residents, parish councils and developers alike as the consultation moves into its next phase.
