Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00A very good morning to you once again, people of Somerset. Welcome to another week in the
00:06greatest county in the UK. It's Daniel Mumby, your local democracy reporter. No, I am not
00:12legally obliged to say that. I just feel that's the truth of the matter. In any case, you
00:17join me at the Gravity Roundabout on the outskirts of Bridgewater, or more specifically, just
00:23outside the small village of Puritan. This is where the A39, coming off the M5, meets
00:30the road leading up to the Gravity Enterprise Zone, where Somerset's new £4 billion gigafactory
00:37will shortly begin construction. We're going to be talking about the first phase of these
00:42plans, and specifically, we're going to be walking along the length of Enterprise Way,
00:47which is this link road or relief road that was constructed nearly five years ago, designed
00:53to provide a safe route for traffic from the M5 to the Gravity Enterprise Zone, without
01:00having to cut through Puritan and Wollavington. We're just past the end of rush hour, but
01:06there's still plenty of cars around. It's very blustery this morning. We're definitely
01:10into the full throes of autumn, even though we haven't had the equinox just yet. I'm going
01:15to be walking along the length of Enterprise Way, all the way to the southwestern tip of
01:21the Enterprise Zone, for the next 15 minutes or so, depending on how briskly I can get
01:27across this stony section and onto the pavement, which you can just see zooming away into the
01:30distance. We're going to be talking about the gigafactory plans, and we're also going
01:35to be talking about how this road, which like I say, was built a few years ago now, will
01:39soon get quite a lot busier as a result of that. As per usual with these live streams,
01:46do drop any comments you have in the comment section as we go along, and any that I don't
01:51get to in the moment, I will respond to once we've finished broadcasting. So why are we
01:57talking about this today? Well, if you remember our coverage back in February, when the announcement
02:03was finally confirmed, after months if not years of speculation, that Agritas, which
02:09is part of the Tatar group, was going to be building a gigafactory, building batteries
02:15for electric vehicles, on the Gravity Enterprise Zone, the former Royal Ordnance factory site
02:21between the villages of Puritan and Wollamington, just off junction 23 of the M5. They were
02:26going to be pouring £4bn worth of investment into the area, creating hundreds if not thousands
02:31of new, high-skilled, well-paid local jobs. And since then, there's been lots of legal
02:39agreements being signed behind the scenes, a lot of discussion about how Somerset Council
02:43might stump up some of the investment for said infrastructure. You might have seen our
02:48stories about that, including the possibility of a new access from north of junction 23.
02:56We'll come back onto that in a little bit. But the reason why we're talking about this
03:01today is that Agritas has put forward the plans for the first phase of building what
03:08it's called, very prosaically, Building 1, in the western corner of the site. And that
03:15has been submitted to Somerset Council for deliberation, and we're expecting a decision
03:21on that reasonably quickly. Now, one of the interesting things about the Agritas development
03:28and the Gravity site in general, is that they are not going through the conventional
03:33planning methods. Normally, if you need planning permission or something, you put in a planning
03:38application, it's processed by an officer, it goes out to all the statutory consultees,
03:43and then you get a decision within weeks or months, or if it's particularly contentious,
03:49maybe a year. Sometimes it has to go to public committee. The difference with the Gravity
03:53site is that it is subject to something called a Local Development Order, or an LDO. And
03:58this was agreed by Sedgemoor District Council several years ago. And essentially, what an
04:03LDO does is that it lays out parameters of the different uses of a given area of land.
04:10So identifying within the Gravity site, which areas are for commercial use, which could
04:16be for residential accommodation, if that's still needed, which could be set aside for
04:21green space, for transport links, such as car parking or cycling or anything like that.
04:27And which sites within that huge brownfield area could be used for any culture or leisure
04:33activities. And as long as that LDO is in place, Agritas and its subsidiaries have a
04:41much shorter application that they can put forward. And as long as it complies with the
04:45LDO, they can get permission for that element relatively quickly, which means they can start
04:51building it relatively quickly. And of course, the sooner it's built, the sooner those jobs
04:56will start rolling through into Bridgewater and the surrounding towns and villages, which
05:01is great for everyone. It's great for this part of Somerset, obviously, but they are
05:06going to be pulling in these new jobs from a very large catchment area. So if you live
05:10on the eastern side of the county in, say, Froome or Wells or Bruton or anywhere like
05:15that, although it's a fair distance to travel, don't write it off. This is something that
05:22is going to change the face of Somerset for years to come. Now, I'm not going to go into
05:26the nitty gritty of the Building 1 plans on this particular live stream. We'll be running
05:33an article looking at the designs. What we do know is that there will be parking provided
05:39on site for Building 1, that there will be an access point from the existing road leading
05:46from the eastern side of Puritan, not far from the new Polden Orchards development,
05:52which Redbrow are currently building. You might have seen that the last time we were
05:56in Puritan for a live stream, where we were talking about the road and the cycle route
06:03across the M5 linking up with the Dunball roundabout, which of course will finally start
06:07being upgraded in the autumn. So Building 1, it will have sizeable car parking around
06:14it. There will be a large amount of green space as a buffer to the north so that we
06:21maintain the existing buffer with the Huntsville River Nature Reserve. And the primary means
06:27of accessing it will be using Enterprise Way, which we're walking along now. Managed to
06:33get off the initial narrow stony section at the Puritan roundabout itself and we're
06:38now on this wide shared use path for pedestrians and cyclists. It's pretty quiet at the moment
06:45but once Building 1 is in place, this will become a big commuter route not just for motorists
06:53but cyclists, those living in the village in the new developments that are planned in
06:56Linwall, Avington, and those coming across the Purple Route, which is being put in place
07:04by Somerset Council as part of its local cycling and walking infrastructure plan. Now, Enterprise
07:10Way was constructed, we're going back sort of 2019, 2020 times, certainly pre-pandemic,
07:18as a result of a £10.3 million investment with Searchmoor District Council and its partners
07:25stumping up the money. We're walking under one of the bridges that was put in place.
07:30It's a little bit echoey, but not quite as echoey as the railway tunnels in Watchit that
07:36we explored not too recently, not too distant past. And when this was put in place, this
07:44was obviously built before the Gigafactory plans were confirmed, so it was a case of
07:50using this to unlock the site from the M5 without knowing precisely what the end use
07:56of the site would be. And one of the... plenty of lorries already using it, so I'm having
08:04to shout a bit. One of the details that came out once the Gigafactory was announced is
08:10that although this road will be sufficient for the construction of Building 1, it will
08:16not in itself be enough to handle the daily influx of the workforce to and from the site,
08:24which is why, if you go back to our reports in the spring and early summer, there are
08:28various discussions going on about the possibility of a new Junction 22A being built between
08:37Bridgewater and Highbridge to take road traffic directly into the gravity site from the north.
08:44There's also discussions going on about restoring the rail link that was in place when the Royal
08:50Ordnance Factory was up and running. It's possible that may only end up being for freight
08:54rather than passenger travel, but all of these discussions are going on in earnest. And the
09:01longer the shorter it is, whatever they end up deciding doing with the northern access
09:06to the site, as you can see it just looming into the distance, we've got Bolton Orchards
09:10on our left here of 120 homes being delivered by Red Row. Whatever they end up deciding,
09:16Enterprise Way is going to be getting a lot busier with first construction traffic and
09:23then the daily commute. We will be doing some follow-ups in the coming weeks about the possibility
09:32of new bus services being laid on, not just from Bridgewater but from Highbridge and Burnham
09:37as well, bringing in the workforce from the north of here. These are all decisions that
09:41will need to be taken with some haste and let's hope that Somerset Council makes the
09:48right decisions as we go along. If you've only just joined me here on Somerset Live,
09:53it's Daniel Mumby, your local democracy reporter. I'm on the eastern edge of Puritan, a small
09:57village just to the east of Bridgewater, northeast to be specific, and we are walking along Enterprise
10:03Way. We're not far from our final destination already which is the Gramercy Enterprise Zone,
10:08the former Royal Ordnance Factory. This huge brownfield site which has lain undeveloped
10:13for many years but has now been acquired by Agritas and where a £4 billion gigafactory
10:21will eventually be delivered, creating thousands of local jobs. You can see that there's already
10:26some early stage construction work going on on site to kind of prime the area for when
10:33Building 1 can be delivered. We are expecting a decision on that planning application to
10:39deliver Building 1 and the access arrangements. We're expecting that very, very shortly, certainly
10:44before the end of the year, and we can expect construction to ramp up very much after Christmas
10:50if it doesn't before then. So enjoy the relative calm of Puritan Way while it lasts, of Enterprise
10:57Way I should say, while it lasts because this part of Puritan is to get a whole lot busier
11:02going forward, and that's not to mention of course the potential for 1,400 homes in that
11:08direction planned by Persimmon on the western edge of Woolamington. I will just touch again
11:14on this development which Red Row are putting together, 120 houses on what's been christened
11:19the Polden Orchard site, and if you go back a couple of weeks we ran an article on the
11:25Puritan Neighbourhood Plan which was put together by the Parish Council, which essentially
11:29says in no uncertain terms that once this development site on the left is fully built
11:34out and occupied, the village does not legally have to provide any further housing on any
11:38allocated site until the end of the local plan period, which is 2032. Now that does
11:45come with a number of caveats, the two biggest being the new Somerset-wide local plan will
11:51be enforced by the spring of 2028, fingers crossed, it's a huge undertaking, it's still
11:56at its very early stages, and number two, there could be windfall sites, that's farmers
12:03or other land promoters that come forward and say we can put houses here very easily,
12:07it might not be in the neighbourhood plan but there is a need for local housing of a
12:11certain kind. These are the kind of arguments they'll make, not necessarily my views. In
12:16any event, whoever ends up living in these red road properties will be within walking
12:22distance of this huge new core of business activity, and this bridge between Bridgewater
12:33and the Somerset levels, stretching forward you can see into the northern part of Somerset
12:39just seeing the hills in the background there. Now, I'm going to cross this roundabout in
12:44the moment, and I'm going to attempt to do so without getting run over by the construction
12:50traffic that's going to the Polden Orchard site, you can see that there's already relatively
12:56new and wide walking and cycling routes on this roundabout, and they've been extended
13:03up to the edge of the site, I'm not going to be trespassing on the site itself, we're
13:07going to go as far as that Harris fencing, and then we'll round things off. But hopefully
13:12this does give you a good idea of the infrastructure that's currently here in terms of the, not
13:18just the cycle routes, but the road and its capacity. £10.3 million, like I say, was
13:23spent delivering Enterprise Way, it took quite a long time to actually complete the project,
13:28but in terms of future-proofing they did the best they could at the time, though further
13:34roads and links of other kinds will be needed as this gigafactory swells to its intended
13:40size. And I'm just going to pause here, you can get a very good view of the entire site
13:49where batteries for electric vehicles will soon be being produced for delivery all across
13:54the UK and internationally. Well I hope that's given you a good indication of the changes
14:00that will be coming to this part of Somerset in the coming months and years. We will have
14:05a full article about this which will include further details about the planning application,
14:10what's been promised around Building 1 which will lie just beyond that brick structure
14:14you see in front of us, and we'll be keeping a close eye on the Council's planning portal
14:19for when they come to a decision on that. Please do leave any further comments that
14:23you have below, apologies if I haven't got round to you yet, I will respond retrospectively,
14:28join me again later in the week when I'll be in Highbridge on Wednesday where I'll be
14:33walking from the Arleport Grove development site, also near the M5, up to where the town's
14:38new McDonald's will be opening. In the meantime this is Daniel Mumby, your local Democracy
14:43Reporter, wishing you a very good day, have a fantastic week and I'll see you all later.
14:47Bye for now.