Land north of the A370 (Farleigh Road), Backwell

Has the land north of Farleigh Road now been officially allocated for development by North Somerset Council?

No, the site is proposed for allocation by North Somerset Council in its draft Local Plan.  North Somerset Council has submitted the draft Local Plan for an independent examination by appointed Planning Inspectors: a process likely to take several months.  If the Planning Inspectors determine that the Local Plan – and the proposed allocation of the site – is sound, North Somerset Council will then adopt the Local Plan as official planning policy, and at that point the site will become officially allocated.

 

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Why are you submitting a planning application before the North Somerset Local Plan has been through the examination process?

The application includes a substantial evidence base in support of the principle of development on the land north of Farleigh Road.  We consider that the submission of an application now assists North Somerset Council in making its case in favour of the Local Plan at the forthcoming independent examination.

There is also currently a significant shortfall in land available for housing in North Somerset, which leads to a presumption in favour of sustainable development under national planning policy.

 

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Doesn’t an application prejudice the outcome of the Local Plan examination?

No. It will remain for the appointed Planning Inspectors to decide whether the proposed allocation of the site is sound, as well as to determine the soundness of the Local Plan as a whole.  The application will be decided by North Somerset Council.

 

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Might North Somerset Council decide your planning application ahead of the Local Plan?

It is down to North Somerset Council when the planning application is determined.  However, we would expect the determination of the application to follow a similar timeframe to the examination of the Local Plan.

 

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What does your planning application include?

This is the formal description of the proposed development that has been submitted to North Somerset Council:

Outline planning permission for the development of a 29.85 hectare site to comprise up to 500 dwellings; up to 2 hectares of mixed-use development (Use Class E, F1, F2, C2 and C3); first phase of proposed relief road; signal controlled junction with the A370; mobility hub; cycle, pedestrian and emergency access from Chapel Hill; public open space; landscaping; surface water attenuation and associated infrastructure

 

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What is ‘outline’ planning permission?

An ‘outline’ application seeks approval from the local planning authority only for the principle of development on a site – in this case, seeking approval from North Somerset Council for the principle of building up to 500 homes and new public facilities and infrastructure on the land north of Farleigh Road.  An outline application does not seek approval for a specific layout or specific building designs.  If the outline application is approved, subsequent applications addressing these matters – known as ‘reserved matters’ applications – will need to be submitted to and approved by North Somerset Council before construction can begin.

 

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Would your outline application decide anything specific, if approved?

Yes. It would decide:

• The maximum number of homes to be built on the site (no more than 500)
• Which parts of the site could be built on for housing
• Which part of the site could be built on for mixed uses (up to 2 hectares)
• Which parts of the site would be set aside for green infrastructure (open space etc)
• The specific location and design of the access junction from Farleigh Road
• The indicative route of a relief road through the site

 

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What do you mean by ‘up to 2 hectares of mixed-use development (Use Class E, F1, F2, C2 and C3)’?

We are proposing that up to two hectares of the site adjacent to Farleigh Road be set aside for a potential range of uses, including:

• Homes, including homes above ground floor commercial uses (Use Class C3)
• Retail floorspace (Class E)
• Business floorspace (Class E)
• A community venue suitable for a range of possible uses (Class F1 / F2)
• A care home (C2)
• A children’s nursery (Class E)
• Café, coffee shop, bakery, hairdressers, dentists etc (Class E3)

It should be noted that the mixed-use area will not necessarily include all of these uses.  Including this mixed-use area as part of our application provides flexibility to provide some or all of these uses on the site, although the precise uses will be confirmed at the later ‘reserved matters’ stage.  The uses we are suggesting have been influenced by the sorts of facilities residents told us they would like to see provided when we held our public consultation.

 

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How are you proposing to protect on-site wildlife and ecology?

There are some valuable on-site habitats, such as woodland, hedgerows, and grassland, and these have been prioritised for retention, buffering and enhancement, incorporated into green corridors and open spaces.  Around 50% of the site in total (14.1 hectares) is proposed for green infrastructure, and where habitat loss is unavoidable – for example, some breaks in the existing hedgerows will be needed – new and enhanced habitats will be provided to maintain and improve conditions for wildlife.

The proposals are subject to the mandatory requirement to achieve a 10% net gain in the amount of biodiversity found currently on-site.  The BNG hierarchy has been followed whereby 1) impact avoidance and mitigation measures are prioritised in the first instance, then 2) the proposals are designed to include high-quality, feasible habitat enhancement and creation measures that can be achieved within a development context on-site, and finally 3) off-site measures can be secured to achieve an overall 10% BNG.  In this case, these are likely to include habitat creation measures on land in proximity to the site.  This will be determined at the ‘reserved matters’ stage.

We have also submitted a Lighting Impact Assessment with the application, which demonstrates that artificial lighting illumination levels can be restricted to a minimum, minimising disturbance to bats whilst maintaining public safety.

 

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Why are you proposing just the first phase of the relief road?

The proposed relief road is intended to provide a new, direct link between Farleigh Road and Station Road, crossing the railway and bypassing the Backwell Crossroads.

We only control about one-third of the land required for the relief road, therefore we are not in a position to deliver the entire road, just its first phase.  What we can and have done is provide for the relief road to have an appropriate access junction on Farleigh Road, and from there take the most appropriate route through our site.  We have also made sure that sufficient land is provided for the road to be built to the specification North Somerset Council wants, making the road wide enough so that it is suitable for buses and HGVs, and also providing a segregated pedestrian and cycle pathway along its entire length, separated from the carriageway by a tree planted verge.

 

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Would the first phase of the relief road be delivered in full before homes are built on-site?

The construction of homes on this site actually depends on the delivery of a substantial section of the relief road’s first phase, because the relief road and its new access junction on Farleigh Road would serve as the sole day-to-day access to the site for vehicles.  While it is unlikely that the first phase of the relief road will have been delivered in its entirety before construction of homes begins, it remains the case that a large portion of the homes proposed for this site are reliant on most of the relief road’s first phase being in place before they can be built.

 

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Could all 500 homes end up being built on your site before the remaining phases of the relief road are delivered in full, linking Farleigh Road with Station Road?

This will be a considered during the course of the application, as it will depend on a technical assessment of existing highways capacity.  We will discuss with North Somerset Council in the coming months how many homes could come forward before the remaining phases of the relief road are completed.

 

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You’re proposing an ‘emergency’ access from Chapel Hill. Will this access be open to any vehicles other than emergency vehicles?

Not on a day-to-day basis – neither during the construction phase nor when the development is completed.

 

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Have you assessed the traffic impact of your proposals on local roads and junctions?

Yes.  A Transport Assessment has been submitted with the planning application, thoroughly assessing the traffic impact of the proposals on local roads and junctions under a range of scenarios, whilst simultaneously taking into account the additional traffic that will be generated by other developments in the area that already have planning permission and by the rest of the ‘Land east of Backwell’ allocation proposed in the draft Local Plan.

In all the scenarios tested in the Transport Assessment, all but one of the local road junctions were found to operate within capacity with our development fully built.  The one exception was the Backwell Crossroads, which was found to operate above capacity in the absence of the full proposed relief road linking Farleigh Road with Station Road.  However, with the full relief road in place, Backwell Crossroads was found to operate within capacity, even when factoring in additional traffic from the already consented developments and from the rest of the ‘Land east of Backwell’ allocation.  There may therefore be a period of time where there will be increased traffic through the Crossroads before the full relief road can be completed.  However, this will be necessary in order to see the significant future benefits of the relief road.

 

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Have you assessed the impact of your proposals on known flooding issues in the immediate area (i.e. Farleigh Road, Chapel Hill and Farleigh Fields)?

Yes.  A Flood Risk Assessment and Sustainable Drainage Statement have been submitted with the planning application, assessing what the current flood risks are both on-site and in the immediate area, and proposing a strategy to ensure the development has a sustainable drainage system that does not exacerbate any existing flooding issues.

A number of residents who took part in our public consultation in July 2025 pointed out that there were existing surface water flooding issues on Farleigh Road and Chapel Hill.  Several also raised concerns that the consented Farleigh Fields development to the south of Farleigh Road, now under construction, could increase the risk of surface water flooding on our site.  These issues have been investigated and it was found:

• While the majority of the surface water flood risk to the site originates from within the site, the main exception is an area south of Farleigh Road.  Surface water is shown to flow down Backwell Hill Road and on to Farleigh Road, before entering the site near the Church Lane junction and flowing west across the site.  In response to this, space has been provided within the site to allow for the surface water flow route that originates from Farleigh Road to flow through the site unimpeded, via a roadside swale, without posing a risk to the development itself.

• Flood mapping confirms that fluvial flooding of Chapel Hill railway underpass originates off-site from the Land Yeo.  As such, the proposed development will not exacerbate any existing fluvial flood risk issues at the underpass.  In addition, surface water is shown to flow down Chapel Hill towards the underpass, where it is joined by surface water run-off from land to the east of Chapel Hill.  The proposed surface water drainage strategy will ensure that no flows from the proposed development are directed towards Chapel Hill.

• Surface water flows from the Farleigh Fields development outfall into a ditch behind Backwell Leisure Centre and Backwell School.  The ditch is located approximately 250 metres to the south-west, and a review of the available data shows our site to be approximately 1.5 metres above this feature.  The surrounding topography is also shown to fall to the north-west.  This means that any surface water flows from the Farleigh Fields development will be directed away from our site.

 

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Isn’t it inevitable that the development will worsen surface water flooding further downstream, north of the railway?

No.  The development will discharge most of its surface water to the existing ditch in the north-eastern part of the site (a much smaller amount of surface water will discharge into the existing ditch in the north-western corner of the site), but the surface water drainage system has been designed to attenuate and slow flows as they pass through the site.

Under normal conditions, the restricted discharge from the site will be limited to existing drainage rates; however, during more extreme storm events, there may actually be some betterment, reducing the rate of surface water flows by providing an area for excess water to accumulate before it drains onwards from the site at a pre-determined rate.  It is therefore considered that the proposed development will have no adverse impact on the capacity of the wider drainage network.

 

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What are you proposing to help address local school capacity?

The draft Local Plan sets out that the wider Land east of Backwell allocation will be expected to include provision of land for a primary school:

Provision of land for and delivery of primary school (including early years provision in accordance with government requirements) is required, along with a proportionate contribution towards other education infrastructure including special educational needs provision and family centre services

Rubix Land are promoting most of the rest of the Land east of Backwell allocation and have identified land within their control as ‘Opportunity Land’ that could be used to provide a primary school.  Because the council has stipulated that only one new primary school is required as part of the allocation, we are not proposing a primary school on the part of the allocation we control.  An initial assessment also indicates that the development north of Farleigh Road can be appropriately accommodated within existing schools, particularly when the school proposed as part of the approved Taylor Wimpey development to the west of Backwell is taken into account.

The draft Local Plan does not propose any new secondary school provision for Nailsea and Backwell but states that developments will be expected to make ‘financial contributions to secondary, Post 16, family centre services and special educational needs provision’.

 

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What are you proposing to help address local GP capacity?

North Somerset Council’s draft Local Plan does not suggest any specific measures to improve GP capacity in the Nailsea and Backwell area.  However, the schedule to the accompanying Infrastructure Delivery Plan published in October 2025 does highlight that new or enhanced healthcare provision at Nailsea and Backwell is nonetheless considered ‘Essential Infrastructure’, to be brought forward as part of the strategic developments in the area:

A specific project is not yet identified however, in light of the additional growth in Nailsea and Backwell this item reflects the likely requirement for additional capacity

Now that the application has been submitted, discussions will take place with North Somerset Council about potential contributions to new / enhanced healthcare provision in Backwell.

 

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Have you engaged with Rubix Land, who are promoting most of the rest of the proposed ‘Land east of Backwell’ allocation for development?

We have had discussions with Rubix Land to discuss the potential for co-ordination of the planning applications for our respective parts of the proposed ‘Land east of Backwell’ allocation so that a comprehensive scheme is delivered.  We anticipate that once that application has been submitted, further discussions will take place with them and with North Somerset Council to ensure that the two schemes are aligned and provide for the timely delivery of the proposed relief road in full.

 

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How long do you expect your proposed development would take to build out in full?

Construction could only begin once our ‘outline’ application, subsequent ‘reserved matters’ applications and all pre-commencement conditions have been approved, which will likely take at least a couple of years.  Once started, we expect the development would take up to 8-10 years to build.