Population GrowthPlanning for the District We Are Actually Becoming
Rivermont will add eleven thousand households by 2040. The plan for schools, water and transport currently assumes four thousand.
The district’s local plan was adopted in 2017 and assumes 4,100 additional households by 2040. The county’s household projection, published in 2023, puts the figure at 11,300. Neither document is secret. They have simply never been read side by side in a committee room.
Where the gap shows up first
Three services have lead times long enough that a planning error today is already unrecoverable:
- Primary school places. Six years from decision to first intake. On the county projection the district is short 840 places by 2034.
- Drainage capacity. The Kelvin catchment is at consented capacity now. Every further consent there is a discharge event later.
- Bus frequency. The 14 and the 22 already run at standing capacity in the morning peak.
What we propose
- Adopt the county projection in the local plan review, which is due this year and can be done without a fresh examination.
- Recalculate developer contributions on current land values. The district’s viability assessments use 2016 figures, which is why contributions here run about 40% below the regional average.
- Publish a rolling five-year infrastructure schedule against consented development, updated quarterly.
Growth is not the problem. Growth planned against the wrong number is.
The honest part
Some of this will be unpopular with people who would prefer the district stayed the size it is. The projection does not care what any of us would prefer. The only real choice is whether the schools are built before the households arrive or after.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions this one comes back to at the surgeries, answered in the same words we use there.
No. It is about matching infrastructure to the growth that is already consented. The district has planning permission on the books for 7,400 homes that no school place, bus route or drainage upgrade has been budgeted against.
The county's own 2023 household projection, which the district's local plan has not been updated to reflect. The gap between the two documents is the entire issue.
The school place forecast. It is the longest lead time — a new primary takes six years from decision to first intake — and the one where being wrong is least recoverable.
Not in this term. Most of the cost is developer contribution that the district currently under-collects because its viability assessments use 2016 land values.