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00:00Good morning, people of Somerset. Once again, it's Daniel Mumby, your local democracy reporter,
00:06and welcome to another live stream. You join me outside the Brookfield Nursery site in
00:11the village of Ruishton, just a stone's throw over the M5 from Taunton, in front of the
00:16site of a proposed 150 homes that have been put forward by Taylor Wimpey. And over the
00:22next half hour or so, it's going to be a long and muddy one this morning, we'll be walking
00:27through the village of Ruishton, out past the church, as we head away from the busy
00:32park and ride, and we're going to be investigating just how easy it's going to be for the proposed
00:39residents of that development, if it gets the go-ahead, to find their way across the
00:45M5 to the big Sainsbury's and other elements of the Hankers Ray retail park, without going
00:51anywhere near the park and ride itself, or using the cycle routes that are under the
00:56M5 junction. As per usual with these streams, if you have any comments or questions, do
01:01drop them in, I'll respond to many of them live as I can, but I will have to have my
01:05wits about us, because first of all, there are very few pavements in this part of the
01:10village, so there'll be lots of stop-starting for traffic, and secondly, once we get out
01:14of the village, it's going to be a wet and muddy one. Fortunately, I'm well equipped
01:19with Wellington boots, and almost got stuck on the way reconnaissancing this, if that's
01:25the correct verb, so please let me know your experiences, if you've walked any of the
01:31footpaths we're going along. So, as we just hang back for this car here, you can see we
01:39are on the main road into Ruishton, that leads from the 358, not far from the gateway site
01:45of the Taunton park and ride itself, not far from junction 25 of the M5. This is a very
01:50busy part of Somerset, in the former Taunton Dean area. You can see, even on a Saturday
01:58mid-morning, so outside of peak time, there's lots of cars sort of coming and going and
02:03swinging free. Yeah, we're just doing a live stream for Somerset Live, you're live on the
02:08internet. No, that's fine mate. Nice to have a conscientious audience. So we'll gradually
02:15make our way through, and this reinforces one of the points that I'll be making as we
02:19discuss the application in more detail. 150 homes are being proposed on the western edge
02:25of the village by Taylor Wimpey, one of the companies that is currently tied up delivering
02:30the Orchard Grove development on the western edge of Taunton, out in the Comethrow and
02:35Troll area. That's going to provide up to 2,000 homes by the end of 2028, assuming of
02:40course they can work out all the kinks with the phosphates issues. And if they are going
02:46to put 150 houses in this part of the village, then hopefully they will do something about
02:51the pavements linking in further down, because as I said earlier on the stream, you have
02:56to have your wits about you. Fortunately, the majority of the drivers that we've encountered,
03:02not just on the stream and in preparing for this, have been very conscientious, slowing
03:06down, letting each other pass. You can see there's another van approaching, so we might
03:10just duck in here for a second. And whilst we're ducking in, I will explain why we're
03:16actually out in Ruiston today, because the Taylor Wimpey plans were actually put forward
03:20back in October for initial consultation, and that consultation via the Somerset Council's
03:26official planning website is still open. You can still leave your comments there. But the
03:33reason we're talking about this today is because this application went in just before the approval
03:40of the Ruiston Neighbourhood Plan. I hope I'm pronouncing Ruiston right. Please correct
03:44me if you live in the area and I get it wrong. It seems to be a feature of these streams.
03:48I go to places that are difficult to pronounce and get it rather mistaken. So, if you've
03:54never heard of the Neighbourhood Plan, essentially, under the various planning reforms that were
03:59brought in with the Localism Act back in 2011, town and parish councils were given pots of
04:06money and resources to put together Neighbourhood Plans, where essentially you look at the available
04:11sites for housing, employment, leisure use at a very local level, just in your parish,
04:18or if you sometimes get a joint plan with two surrounding parishes, if it's quite a
04:22small area. And it gives you the opportunity to allocate housing to meet your local need.
04:31And then that plan goes through a series of checks with the Planning Inspectorate.
04:36It goes out to a local referendum, the cost of which is met by Somerset Council as the
04:41main planning authority. And if the referendum is successful, as was the case in Ruiston,
04:48then that plan is formally adopted and it becomes part of Somerset Council's official
04:53planning policy. So, the next time a big housing development is proposed on someone's doorstep,
04:59they can look at that plan, which is legally binding and has been through a series of
05:03rigorous checks and say, yay or nay, depending on whether or not it fits in with the aspirations
05:10of the village. That's how it works in theory. In practice, Neighbourhood Plans carry only
05:17reasonable amounts of weight. And a lot of that depends upon whether or not the larger
05:24planning authority in question has a five-year land supply. And as we've seen from numerous
05:31development stories that we've covered in Somerset, as a result of the phosphates crisis,
05:36as a result of major sites in the major towns of Somerset not coming forward as quickly
05:41as anticipated for redevelopment, not just Brownfield, but major Greenfield ones as well,
05:47that has put pressure on smaller villages, particularly those in places like the Blackmoor
05:51Vale, Temple Coombe, Henstridge, Millbourne Port, and out here on the fringes of Taunton
05:56in Ruishton, in Creech St Michael, Creech Heathfield, and of course, the area surrounding
06:04the Moncton Heathfield Urban Extension. It's put pressure on them to deliver homes in the
06:09absence of those ones coming forward, so that the government can still look at those statistics
06:13at the end of the day and say, yeah, the Council's meeting its annual targets, we don't need
06:17to take over and intervene directly. Now, the Ruishton Neighbourhood Plan was a joint
06:24plan with the neighbouring, I want to say village, but it might be a hamlet called Thorn
06:28Falcon, which is just up the 358 from here. You might have heard the distant rumble of
06:33the 358 near the park and ride as we began our stream. And that plan was emphatically
06:39approved by a substantial majority when they held a referendum. I believe the referendum
06:44was either in December or January, but I'll check that as another car comes down. We're
06:48making slow but steady progress down Ruishton Lane. You can just see the pub in front of
06:55us and that's where we'll be turning left towards the beautiful parish church. But one
06:59interesting quirk of the Ruishton and Thorn Falcon Neighbourhood Plan is that it specifically
07:06says we do not think the village of Ruishton is appropriate for any sizeable housing development.
07:14I'm paraphrasing there, I'll ensure that when we run an article on this that you get
07:17the correct wording as we step in again. And we step into that side as well. I'm going
07:26to cross over the road right now. Now, that statement in the Neighbourhood Plan does
07:35not mean that the parish council here is entirely anti-housing. They're not NIMBY-ist, NIMBY
07:41meaning not in my backyard, if you're not familiar with that wonderful piece of jargon.
07:46But what it does mean is that they feel any new housing in the village should be of a
07:51smaller scale, certainly a lot smaller than 150. It should meet the local need in terms
07:57of the number of bedrooms, the size, and it should be in an area that is well connected
08:04to local facilities as we turn up past the Ruishton Inn and head towards the church.
08:10So far, it's been reasonably straightforward, although we've had huge amounts of traffic
08:14to deal with. There's a few puddles underfoot, but nothing too disastrous. But now we've
08:21finished the easy bit, because we're going to head down past the church, whose clock
08:27appears to be broken, that's unfortunate. But it looks like it's open if you want to
08:31pay a visit and admire the amazing medieval architecture. And we're going to head down
08:37this lane. Good morning. And we will very soon be coming to a little bridge that leads
08:46onto a public right-of-way, and that will lead us across a field. We will walk along
08:51the River Tone. And again, just to warn you, if you're triggered by such things, it's going
08:56to be a muddy one. If you've only just joined me here on Somerset Live, it's Daniel Mumby,
09:02your local democracy reporter. We're in the village of Ruishton, just over the M5 from
09:07Taunton, Somerset's county town, of course. Bridgewater likes to think it's the jewel
09:12of Somerset because of all the investment it's had from Hinckley Point and everything
09:15else, but Taunton is still officially Somerset's county town, home of its cricket club, amongst
09:21many other things. Glad to hear this week that any risk of the football club going into
09:25administration has been seen off, now that they've settled their debts with HMRC. And
09:31we are walking from the Brook Farm nursery site, Brookfields Farm, I should say. It's
09:36a... for some reason it's a tricky name to get out. We started our journey there, we
09:40are coming through the western bit of the village, and we are very shortly going to
09:45be heading along the River Tone, under the motorway, and we hope to end up, within about
09:49half an hour or so, at Hankridge Way, where, amongst other things, there's the Custer,
09:56the Kyries, the Halfords, and various other bits and pieces. And you can just see, as
10:02we prepare to head up these steps, that even though we haven't had rain today, the ground
10:09is still pretty saturated. I'm just going to gently ease my way forward. The bridge
10:15itself is concrete, so it's pretty stable, but we... there's no harm in being a little
10:21tentative. And one of the things that we're trying to demonstrate with live streams like
10:27this, particularly in the winter months, is putting to the test developers' claims that
10:34you can put a huge amount of houses in seemingly the middle of nowhere, and it's sustainable
10:39because people can walk or cycle or otherwise wheel to local facilities. Now, if you've
10:46seen images of this route, we're walking on Google Maps, or any other brand for that
10:51probably, then it does look reasonably flat, dry, and safe. But this field, which until
10:57recently had maize in, is pretty waterlogged. I almost lost one of my Wellington boots getting
11:03through here when we were checking out this route, and you certainly couldn't get a bike
11:09along here. And if you were not as able-bodied as me, and I'm by no means 100% fit, you might
11:16find it very tricky. Now, I should point out, in Taylor Wimpy's defence, because the development
11:21is so relatively near the park and ride junction with its dedicated cycle lanes, which were
11:27put in as part of the massive upgrade of Junction 25, which completed a couple of years ago,
11:33they could just as easily turn and say, well, you can use those ones. You can use the cycle
11:38paths that take you under the motorway junction, round that roundabout, and then pick up the
11:44various junctions from there. And that's all well and good. I'm sure a lot of people
11:48at that end of the village would use those. But, on the days when that route might be
11:54shut, if there's a traffic jam, or if there's some maintenance going on, this footpath we're
11:59using is one of the only other routes from Ruisden into Taunton on foot. And as you can
12:07see, it's pretty waterlogged. I'm having to go very gently because I don't want to get
12:14stuck. I imagine walking through this in the summer will be very picturesque, especially
12:20once we get to the river. This whole section here can be used by the Taunton Angling Association.
12:25I'm not sure exactly what fish you'll find in this part downstream, but please let me
12:29know if you've enjoyed fishing here during the season. I'm so ignorant of these things,
12:34I couldn't even tell you when the fishing season is. But if I just pause here and pan
12:40over the field, you can see it's not just the footpath area that's very wet, you can
12:45see the whole ground is saturated. And that's going to make it very difficult if you were
12:54trying to nip out for a pint of milk and fancied going across the field, rather than doing
12:59the easier thing, unfortunately, of jumping in your car and driving less than a mile,
13:05to get to Sainsbury's that way. Other shops are available, of course. We hear a lot about
13:11local councils and the government pushing so-called active travel, walking and cycling,
13:17trying to get us to cut down on the number of small journeys that we do, the ones that
13:22often cause large amounts of pollution and lead to huge amounts of congestion. And that's
13:27all very well and good. I think it's a principle that most of us could get behind. But if you
13:31don't have the infrastructure in place, whether it's proper cycle lanes, well-maintained footpaths,
13:38areas which are accessible for people in wheelchairs or mobility scooters, and areas
13:43which are safe from flooding, whether it's from the clouds or the river, then you're just not
13:49going to incentivise people enough to get out of their cars. We all care about the environment. We
13:55all want Somerset's green spaces to be preserved and allow them to lock in things. But short of
14:07tarmacking over this path across the whole of the farmer's field and right along the river,
14:11it's not really an option when the weather's wet. And as we've seen over the winters that
14:16I've been covering Somerset, it can get very wet in these parts. If you've only just joined me,
14:23it's Daniel Mumby here, your local democracy reporter. We're out in the parish of Ruisten.
14:28We're just heading slowly but surely towards the M5, where we'll be heading under one of the main
14:36bridges as we near Hankridge Way, our journey's end. I'd say we're about halfway at the moment.
14:41Thank you for everyone who has tuned in so far. Please let me know if you live anywhere near
14:47Ruisten or if you're a Taunton resident. And as we slowly work our way towards the field,
14:53I'm going to give you a little flavour of exactly what Taylor Wimpey is envisaging for its
15:01development, the planned development, it doesn't have approval yet, of 150 homes on Ruisten Lane,
15:08on the Brookfield Farm Shop and Nursery site. Now the sighting question, if you don't know
15:14the outskirts of Taunton, it's on the western edge of Ruisten, adjacent to the Premier Inn and
15:19the Miller and Carter, which you may have driven past when you're coming off the motorway. The
15:25development, which has been dubbed Brookfield Nurseries, a very prosaic and original name,
15:31will be accessed from Ruisten Lane with walking and cycling routes throughout the site that will
15:37potentially, keyword potentially, link up with the 358 junction. And one interesting thing that
15:45we should talk about, in light of how waterlogged the ground is here, is although there is a huge
15:51amount of surface water here, this field is not deemed by the Environment Agency to be at severe
15:57risk of flooding. And what the developer has done in response to early concerns by the local
16:04authority and residents, is that it is essentially said we will put all of the housing at the
16:09southern edge of the site, nearest to the lane, and the northern section will be, you can see that
16:15sort of a earth bank, I don't know if you call it a bund, but where it slopes down to the Black Brook,
16:19which feeds into the Tone not far from where we are now, all of that northern section will be
16:26public open space with new planting and flood prevention measures, so that if the new homes
16:33are put in, yes the water will flow off them, hopefully in a controlled way, but it won't cause
16:39a terrible flood event, at least not for quite some time. Obviously I dare say people will have
16:46views as to whether or not that will work in practice, and as part of that flood mitigation,
16:52to deal with the phosphate issue that we flagged up earlier, there is the prospect of creating some
16:59wetlands not far from here, to ensure that any phosphates generated from the site doesn't
17:08impact too heavily on the Levels and Moors catchment area, which is a Ramsar site, it is
17:13protected not just by British and European law, but international law, and Somerset Council has
17:20a duty of care to ensure that the river that we're walking past now, the Tone, which does look pretty
17:25muddy these days, but it's flowing steadily, doesn't get clogged up with phosphates that can
17:30cause huge algae blooms, put fish species at risk, and just generally ruin the environment. We've
17:37covered in the not-too-distant past the efforts by Somerset Council to deal with the phosphates
17:43problem, they received another £9.6 million from the government just before Christmas to
17:49extend the phosphate credit scheme, where essentially a developer can pay the council
17:56for a certain amount of phosphate credits generated by the following of agricultural land
18:00elsewhere in Somerset, elsewhere in the Tone catchment in this case, and that can be used
18:06for off-site mitigation such as planting forests, creating wetlands and the like. Again, we don't
18:13have a huge amount of details as to where in the county that funding is going to be allocated,
18:19but we hope to have more details of that before the end of the financial year, so keep an eye out
18:24for various articles on various news outlets looking at that. Another big issue of course in
18:32the area is affordable housing, and Taylor Wimpey says that 25% of the 150 homes it wants to deliver
18:40on the nursery site will be affordable, that equates to 38 properties, and this is what a
18:47spokesman for the developer said when we spoke to them. The site is well connected by buses,
18:54walking and cycling routes to Taunton Town Centre, as well as Blackbrook Business Park
18:59and Hankridge Farm, which together offer a range of employment, retail and leisure opportunities.
19:04The nearby Gateway Park and Ride provides a frequent service into the centre of Taunton,
19:09with buses leaving every 15 minutes, that's true, five days a week and every 20 minutes on
19:15Saturdays. The site is some 500 metres north of Nexus 25, a major development opportunity for
19:22employment and related uses. The upgraded motorway junction, and then it essentially goes on talking
19:31about the links that will be provided. Obviously the way that developments work is, if you get
19:40permission to build a certain amount of houses, you don't just build the infrastructure up front
19:45in one go. You might put in the spine road linking all the houses to the main road and the cycle
19:51routes that go on that, but you don't have all of that in place before you build a single house.
19:57I wish it was the other way around, I wish that developers would always be held to account on
20:02this, but as much as we try and we do the best we can here at the Local Democracy Reporting Service
20:07to do so, it isn't always feasible. We're just walking past the confluence of the River Tone in
20:15the distance there and the Black Brook and very shortly we will cross over this footbridge,
20:20fortunately it's another concrete one so it's pretty stable, past the thick mud that I've
20:25been trudging through for however long we've been live, maybe 20 minutes, thank you very
20:29much. And we will head under the motorway so I might have to shout a bit more. All this shouting
20:39is good preparation for next week where, if I may be vain enough to plug, I'm going to be appearing
20:45in a production of Treasure Island down in Chardstock, just over the border in Devon,
20:49playing Dr Livesey. It's a version that I've written myself so if you fancy coming to see
20:54what I get up to when I'm not writing or out here live streaming, feel free. I will put a link to
21:02the tickets in the description. If you've only just joined me, thanks first of all for not switching
21:08off during that blatant plug. It's Daniel Mumby, your Local Democracy Reporter. We have started our
21:15stream today at the Brookfield Nursery site in Ruishton, a picturesque village on the outskirts
21:22of Taunton. We are walking under the M5, looking at how easy it is for the potential residents of
21:31150 new homes to access the Hankridge Way Business Park, one of the main out-of-town shopping centres
21:38in Taunton. We've survived a muddy field leading from George's Church in Ruishton and we are now
21:45underneath Somerset's main motorway. And this is one of a number of structures which National
21:54Highways, the agency formerly known as Highways England, this is one of the bridges that they
21:59are going to upgrade before the end of the year as part of a build programme of five motorway
22:06bridges between Wellington and Bridgewater that will be refurbished. What we don't know is whether
22:12any of this graffiti will be removed. Let me know in the comments if you like it or not. I happen to
22:18think it's quite funky but it's a fine line I suppose between art and vandalism when it comes
22:24to this sort of thing. Now so far you may be thinking, okay, it's been a little precarious, it's
22:31a waterlogged field with a narrow busy lane, we'll get pavements on there, it'll be
22:38relatively straightforward once the improvements have been in place. And you may well think that.
22:42However, as we continue our journey upstream along the River Tone towards Hankridge Way, we are not
22:53entirely out of the woods because although what we're walking on now is a concrete footpath which
22:59you can theoretically cycle on, there has been a lot of rain over the past few days and it's very
23:08waterlogged. In fact, you might even call that a trench of water. And I'm going to very steadily
23:15walk through. Obviously the ground underneath it is hard, not on those benches there but on the
23:20path we're sticking to. But I certainly wouldn't want to try and get a bike through here and if I
23:26was in a wheelchair I think I would have given up by this point. Let me know if you've attempted
23:31this journey on a bike or any part of it on a bike or any other form of wheeled transport. Just
23:38trying to walk through without creating too many bow waves and sloshing muddy water all over my
23:44trousers. It's only up to about ankle height here but as you can see as we come around the corner
23:49to where that bin is, it might just get a little bit deeper. It's definitely Wellington boot weather
23:56and this is one of the prices we pay you might say for being so near a river. And this whole
24:03area here is designed in part for flood attenuation. It's designed to ease the flow of water into the
24:10tone but as you can see it's coming up over my ankles now and we're getting a little bit deeper,
24:19nearer to the muddy bank. In fact I think I'm gonna have to go onto the bank itself or nearer
24:24to the bank. Now because this section is a decent distance away from the proposed development of 150
24:37homes it is unlikely that any upgrade could be secured through section 106 funding from Taylor
24:45Wimpey because section 106 money has to be spent either on the development site or very close by
24:52it, certainly in the same parish. And what I don't know is whether the parish of Ruisten has
24:57already ended and we're now technically in the Taunton town area or whether we are still in the
25:06area where that funding could be applied. And of course even if you get community infrastructure
25:11levy, the other form of development contribution from the site, there's no guarantee that it will
25:15be allocated to here rather than something more extravagant and significant like say building a
25:22new spine road for another major development on a difficult site or providing a new school like
25:27the one that's going on at Orchard Grove right now. They've had to use a large amount of community
25:32infrastructure levy to make that happen as a result of viability issues within the Orchard
25:38Grove site. We hope to bring you an update on the state of play with Orchard Grove before the end of
25:44the spring. We're just waiting on a few different members of the consortium to come back to us with
25:51various statements but we'll bring that to you in the coming weeks and if the weather improves we
25:55might even get out on those footpaths and take you right around the edge of that site where 2,000
26:00homes will be developed. If you've only just joined me here it's Daniel Mumby, your waterlogged
26:06local democracy reporter. I'm walking on a flooded saturated footpath. We started our journey
26:13from Ruishton about half an hour ago. We are a stone's throw from Hankridge Way. You
26:20might just be able to see the loading dock of the Sainsbury's peeking through the trees
26:27and we are walking this route to show how easy or not, and I think we're veering very much towards
26:34not, it is for people from a planned new development of 150 homes on the western
26:40edge of Ruishton to nip under the motorway and do a little bit of shopping on foot or by bike
26:46rather than having to go underneath the motorway junction itself with the footpaths that were put
26:50in place. We might well bring you a stream of that in the not too distant future to compare
26:57how easy it is. You can see the tone is reasonably high here and flowing pretty quickly.
27:04Fortunately this footpath is set reasonably far back from the river so it's not
27:10dangerous in that sense but if you don't have wellington boots and a decent sense of balance
27:16this is not the first route you would want to take.
27:21Fortunately now we're moving on to a much higher up and flatter stretch but
27:26both literally and metaphorically we're not out of the woods just yet. There's one more big hairpin
27:32that we need to take before we head on to concrete and tarmac and we'll finish our stream
27:39just on the edge of the business park. I'm not going to do any more brand drops. I think you
27:44all know roughly where we are. Thank you to everyone who was stuck with us on stream. Thank
27:49you for all your various opinions. I dare say there is a deeper debate to be had about the
27:56impact on immigration in Somerset and whether that is driving up demand for housing rather than
28:02people who are already British citizens relocating to Somerset because it's a brilliant place to
28:07work whether it's internal or external immigration. I'm not going to express an opinion on that. I
28:11think that's something that we should leave to the open and robust discussion of our readers
28:16and that's not me dodging responsibility. That is me trying to present a balanced picture.
28:21Most people agree that we need more new housing in Somerset but we disagree on where it should be,
28:29how affordable it should be, who should pay for it and how quickly it can be delivered.
28:35Now if I were wearing stronger shoes and this were drier I could run up that bank but I'm not
28:41an idiot so I'm just going to do a quick little loop in this direction through a further little
28:47puddle around what appears to be a series of mole hills. I might be completely wrong about that
28:55and that will lead us up onto this concrete trail. I'm just going to pan in this direction.
29:01You can see there are further paths that lead all the way through to the town. If you carry on in
29:06that direction you eventually end up coming along the river towards the firepool site and you end
29:13up at Firepool Lock. We're not going to have time to get that far today but that is definitely a
29:17route that we'll explore in the future. Maybe once the latest section of the firepool regeneration
29:24is delivered with the new boulevard work starting on that, hopefully in a matter of weeks.
29:31But we are now coming out into Hankridge Way. What I think we'll do is we'll just cross over
29:37towards this lay-by making sure that there are no delivery lorries coming our way
29:44and we will finish our stream just hovering before the certain coffee establishment that
29:51you can see in front of us. Again, I'm not going to name the bland because we'll get into more
29:54trouble. Things are much firmer here. Still the odd puddle here and there and a decent amount of
30:04dog poop bins along the route so if you did fancy taking your man's best friend or woman's best
30:10friend along this route, I would say take plenty of towels with you and ensure that your dog has
30:15long enough legs so that they don't end up effectively swimming along the footpath.
30:21But here we are. We've made it to the edge of Hankridge Way, the Dean Retail Park as it's also
30:27known. One of the major out-of-town developments in Taunton and I think that's where we'll call
30:32things to a halt. Thank you very much for your time today. If you missed any part of this stream
30:37it'll be available indefinitely on our Facebook page. Look out for an article next week. I'll
30:41respond to any of your comments that I didn't get to, certainly the less contentious ones.
30:46And as a final plug, if you fancy coming to see me when I'm not doing local democracy work,
30:51I'll be performing in Treasure Island this coming Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Childstock.
30:55Ticket link will be in the description. In the meantime, this is Daniel Mumby saying...