Councillors backed the homes on 26 August, then deferred the only road in. It is back tonight: a three-arm roundabout, a toucan crossing and 73 objections.
Stratford-on-Avon District Council’s Planning Committee approved up to 217 homes at Southam last month, then deferred the application for the only road into them. That second application returns to the committee tonight, Wednesday 23 September, and officers again recommend approval.
The meeting starts at 6pm in the Council Chamber at Elizabeth House, Church Street, Stratford-upon-Avon. Southam is about 14 miles east of Stratford.
What happened on 26 August
The committee took the two Home Farm applications one after the other, and split them.
The outline application for the homes, ref 25/00346/OUT, was granted by five votes to two with one abstention, subject to a section 106 agreement being signed within six months, 42 conditions and 10 notes. That is recorded in the minutes of the 26 August meeting, published on the council’s democratic services site.
The access application, ref 25/00347/FUL, was deferred by eight votes to one. The minutes record the reason precisely: members wanted “further information on the traffic island and pedestrian crossing”. Councillor A Parry proposed the deferral and Councillor T Ballinger seconded it.
The order matters, because the officer’s report for tonight calls the access application “fundamental to support” the 217 homes. The outline permission has a resolution to grant but has not been issued; the report says it will be granted once the section 106 agreement is signed by all parties.
What is actually being built on the bypass
The application is for highway works, not houses. The officer’s report lists the works as including:
- a new priority-controlled three-arm roundabout junction on the A423
- a four-metre-wide toucan crossing on the bypass
- a segregated cycleway and footway on the north side of the new carriageway, and a footway on the south side
- a tactile crossing near the roundabout
- a segregated cycleway and footway on the west side of the bypass feeding into Stowe Drive
- a gabion wall on the west side of the bypass
- a four-metre emergency access off the bypass with collapsible bollards
The applicant is Kler Group Limited. The case officer is Stuart Flaherty.
What has changed since the deferral
The report now before members sets out the highways evidence in full: a Stage 1 Road Safety Audit of the access and works, tracking analysis for service and emergency vehicles, and confidence interval analysis of the junction modelling. On that modelling the officer writes that “the impacts of the proposed development were not considered to be severe”, and concludes there would be no severe adverse impact on the transport network and no unacceptable impact on highway safety.
Warwickshire County Council’s highways team raised no objection on 28 July and again on 26 August, subject to three conditions. National Highways raised no objection. The council’s own landscape officer objects, on the grounds that the land is unallocated and in open countryside; the officer’s report accepts “moderate harm” to the character and appearance of the area.
County highways did add one caveat. The access was designed before the South Warwickshire Local Plan reached an advanced stage, so it does not fully account for the wider land to the south now being promoted through that plan. If that land is allocated and comes forward, highways say the access “may require further assessment and potentially additional mitigation or design changes”. The officer gives that very limited weight, because the plan is only at Regulation 19 consultation stage.
One other change is easy to miss. In an update circulated at the August meeting, the recommendation on this application was altered to a plain “Grant”, with the section 106 requirement removed from it. The same update deleted, from this application, a £12,516 habitat monitoring contribution and a list of highways contributions that had been sought: improvements at the A423 and A425 roundabout, a diverted bus service into the site, cycling and walking routes towards the town centre and Southam College, and cycle parking in the town centre. Those obligations sit with the outline application instead, where county highways’ response remains no objection subject to conditions, notes and financial contributions. A suggested condition on a bus turning circle and bus stop infrastructure was also removed from this application.
The objections, and why officers still say yes
The report records 73 letters of objection, five comment-only responses and one letter of support. Southam Town Council objects. So does the ward member, Councillor Gillian Padgham, who wrote that the A423 “is a very busy bypass road, which already has a number of traffic conflict points with intersections and pedestrian lights in close proximity”.
Objectors raise the safety of the roundabout and the crossing, pressure on schools and GP surgeries, the loss of best and most versatile agricultural land, and the fact that the South Warwickshire Local Plan is not yet adopted.
Against that sits the council’s housing land supply. The most recent calculation, at 31 March 2025, gives the district 2.21 years of deliverable housing land against a five-year requirement of 5,560 homes, or 1,112 a year. Officers give substantial weight to the homes this road would unlock. We set out how that figure works on our page on Stratford planning news.
There is also a new rulebook. A revised National Planning Policy Framework was published on 17 August 2026, after the August committee papers went to print. Officers told members that the old paragraph 11(d) test, under which permission should be refused where harm “significantly and demonstrably” outweighed the benefits, has gone. The test now is whether the benefits would be “substantially outweighed” by adverse effects. The officer concludes they would not be.
The site has been refused before. An outline application for up to 240 homes on the land was refused on 20 October 2016 and dismissed at appeal on 15 January 2018, at a point when the council could still demonstrate a five-year supply. An earlier appeal was dismissed in September 1999. The wider land is now inside draft allocation SOU.1, “Land to the East of Southam”, which carries an indicative capacity of 3,122 homes in the emerging plan.
Also on tonight’s agenda
The committee will also decide application 26/01894/PIP, permission in principle for a minimum of three and a maximum of five homes on land to the rear of Edoras, Banbury Road, Pillerton Priors, about seven miles south-east of Stratford-upon-Avon. Officers recommend approval. It is at committee because the parish council objected. A scheme for two dwellings on the same land was refused in June 2023 and dismissed at appeal in March 2024.
What it means for you
- If you live in Southam, tonight decides whether the 217-home scheme gets a buildable access. The homes already have a resolution to grant. Without this permission the outline consent has no road serving it.
- If you use the A423 bypass, the change to plan for is a new three-arm roundabout and a toucan crossing on the stretch between the Aldi site and the A425 Daventry Road roundabout, which the report puts about 370 metres to the north-east.
- If you want to follow it, the meeting is at 6pm at Elizabeth House, Church Street. Agendas, reports and minutes are published on the council’s democratic services site.
- A decision tonight is a resolution, not a permission. The formal notice follows, and for the outline application it follows only once the section 106 agreement is signed.
We will report the outcome. Our roadworks and travel page carries what is closed across the district this week.
Sources: Stratford-on-Avon District Council Planning Committee agenda and officer reports for 23 September 2026, and the minutes of the meeting of 26 August 2026, all published at democracy.stratford.gov.uk.
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