f. Other villages where development will be strictly controlled

Some organic scale growth should also be allowed for in sub-Selected Rural Villages to keep those settlements alive, and/or maximise opportunities for brown field development.

Paragraph 55 of the Framework states, "To promote sustainable development in rural areas, housing should be located where it will enhance or maintain the vitality of rural communities."

Development can only support the vitality of rural communities in such villages if it is located in such villages - focusing all new housing development on the market towns and a handful of larger villages will not assist in enhancing, supporting or maintaining the rural services and community life there i.e. school, village groups, bus service links, etc.

Paragraph 29 of the Framework also states,

"The transport system needs to be balanced in favour of sustainable transport modes, giving people a real choice about how they travel. However, the Government recognises that different policies and measures will be required in different communities and opportunities to maximise sustainable transport solutions will vary from urban to rural areas."

Paragraph 34 of the Framework notes also there is explicit acknowledge that in rural areas, these opportunities may be more limited and so this should not be at the expense of the delivery of other aspects of the Framework.

As such, if the availability of public transport or the size of the settlement is (wrongly) deemed the main criteria for the assessment of sustainability, then it would be at the expense of the potential other wider cumulative benefits of some modest development in these villages in the rural area i.e. maintaining and supporting mixed and balanced communities, supporting local services, etc.

Development should not be precluded in one village at the expense of others on this basis.

I agree with this objective on the understanding that APPROPRIATE means sustainable developments and Parish Council objections carry weight.

I wish for Sutton in the Elms to be stated as a settlement in its own right - on the basis that it has heritage dating to at least the 11thC, is mentioned in the Doomsday Book and fundamental to its heritage is the Quaker Cottage and the Baptist Church, both holding significant historical interest.

People who have opted to live in a rural village - and thus forgo the amenities that living in a larger settlement would entail - should have the right to stay in the environment of their choice and not have a larger settlement foisted on them insidiously. I appreciate this will be met with cries that this is selfish because we have a housing crisis, but when there are nearly a million empty houses in this country, when there are hundreds of thousands of flats above shops that could be renovated ( which would breath new life into dying town/city centres) when there are approximately eight million households of single occupancy available which could be given incentives to rent out rooms, when people are allowed to buy second homes without being penalised, when local authorities encourage foreign investors to buy property/land as investments and these investments are left empty then I don't believe there is a crisis. Building on rural sites is being done because of greed - not need.

I would also like to point out that on September 8th 2016 www.planningportal.co.uk ( The national home of planning and building regulations information and the national planning application service ) published a report that said '' Councils have granted enough planning consents to meet the government's ambition of one million new homes by 2020 but developers are failing to build them..'' The research was carried out by the independent think tank Civitas. Obviously the local plan looks beyond 2020 but as Britain leaves the EU then the demand on housing may lessen and rather than causing irreversible damage to a green field area then perhaps this should be halted until a clearer picture emerges.

.Many small sites on the edge of rural villages are rich in wildlife, and building on them will -bit by bit - deplete the available habitat .On the 14th of September 2016 a partnership of 53 organisations published The State of Nature report 2016. The report shows that a new measure that assesses how intact a country's biodiversity is, puts the UK among the most nature depleted countries in the world, it is ranked 189 out of 218 countries.