Question
I have written to the Leader of the Council, expressing my concerns that the status of our town is in decline. Most importantly, sustainability, which appears frequently in Council documents, is being ignored. Little or no marketing action appears to be underway to attract quality retail outlets, and I see no evidence of sustainability in the way major housing developments are being planned and implemented. I have had no response from the Leader of the Council. Therefore, I plan to be present at the Executive Meeting on 28th September 2017. I would like to ask the Leader if the Council thinks that retaining town status is important, and if so, what is being done to sustain it?
Minutes:
Question
I have written to the Leader of the Council, expressing my concerns that the status of our town is in decline. Most importantly, sustainability, which appears frequently in Council documents, is being ignored. Little or no marketing action appears to be underway to attract quality retail outlets, and I see no evidence of sustainability in the way major housing developments are being planned and implemented. I have had no response from the Leader of the Council. Therefore, I plan to be present at the Executive Meeting on 28th September 2017. I would like to ask the Leader if the Council thinks that retaining town status is important, and if so, what is being done to sustain it?
Answer
Firstly I would like to express my sincere apologies for not responding to your e-mail.
Heeding public concerns in the early 2000s about failed private sector regeneration initiatives in Wokingham Town Centre, the Borough Council adopted a masterplan in 2010 following much public engagement and consultation; it set out a vision to reinforce the vitality and viability of the town. Subsequently the Borough created a regeneration company to enable this vision and investment led on a £138m regeneration initiative at three main sites. These are: Peach Place, Elms Field and Carnival Pool. Work is completed and occupied at Peach Place Phase One, Peach Place Phase 2 redevelopment is underway and Elms Field is due to start soon. The Carnival Pool car park is completed and open, with planning in hand for the next phases. Environmental improvements jointly commissioned and funded, that is £3.9m by the Borough and Town, are progressing well in the Market Place right now.
Acknowledging our housing needs, as set out in the South East Plan, we also adopted a Core Strategy in 2010 which envisioned dealing with our strategic housing requirements in four high quality, infrastructure rich, strategic development locations which are known as SDLs. These developments are South of the M4 (Shinfield/Spencers Wood/Three Mile Cross), Arborfield, and North and South Wokingham. We masterplanned these through extensive public engagement and consultation and adopted them in final guidance in 2012. These were designed specifically as sustainable developments each creating walkable districts with district and neighbourhood shopping centres, associated community buildings, secondary and primary schools, library space, employment uses, sports facilities, parks, open spaces, new roads, public transport and other facilities. There are local road improvements, five substantial new roads which include the Eastern Shinfield Relief Road, the Northern Distributor Road, the Southern Distributor Road, Arborfield Cross Bypass, Winnersh Relief Road, two park and ride facilities and an interconnecting greenway network between the SDLs and the main towns of the district. The SDLs are being built now along with £350m of infrastructure. These infrastructures as I have said before are:
• 5 new roads plus the Station Link Road and Winnersh Relief Road;
• Lots of new pedestrian and cycle links;
• SANGs which are open spaces;
• Allotments;
• Three new sports hubs;
• Seven new Primary Schools and one extension;
• One new Secondary School which has just opened formally this month;
• Five new community buildings;
• Six new neighbourhood centres;
• One new district centre;
• The Science Park; and
• Two park and rides which I mentioned before.
As recently as August The Housing and Finance Institute presented our Council with a certificate for being housing business ready recognising the achievements around planning and delivering implementation and sustainability.
We have also been monitoring the satisfaction levels with the SDLs and this shows an increasing and high level of satisfaction from residents now living on these sites showing 84% satisfied compared with just 80% in 2016. The scale of delivery work currently being planned and implemented in Wokingham Borough provides evidence of a highly sustainable strategy.
Clearly the Borough Council shares your concerns as we have invested substantially already in addressing them. The product of our plans is being implemented around us right now; however as they appear to not be fully acknowledged or understood I accept that perhaps we are guilty of not shouting loudly enough about these impressive accomplishments.
Supplementation Question
I am very much aware of all the good work that you have done in terms of the developments and all the facilities that you have put into those. I am talking more about the town centre. We have lost Marks and Spencer. I sit on a panel where I get questioned and provide suggestions to Marks and Spencer and it appears to me that Marks and Spencer are beginning to question whether they should have left Wokingham. They put a lot of money into the garage further out of town providing a Simply Foods facility. I think if the Council had had some interaction with them, certainly more than they did, we may have retained Marks and Spencer in a slightly different form. My view, which I have expressed to them, is that if they had saved the money that they had put into Simply Foods and actually developed a food shop and a small café on the premises that they were occupying I think they would have done a lot better.
I just question whether the Council is actually interacting with retailers to encourage them to come into the town and provide some incentive to actually retain quality retailers in this town because that is what really enhances the status of the town?
Supplementary Answer given by the Executive Member for Business and Economic Development and Regeneration
I hear what you are saying and have recently been involved in completely understanding what we are doing here in the town centre and with our agents; which I will talk a little bit about later.
Interesting conversations have taken place with Marks and Spencer over the years. It isn’t just Wokingham that they have left with their small stores they have also moved towards these larger, enormous stores like the one they have got in Bracknell. Long conversations have taken place with them over the years. We did not want to see them go, as you can imagine, but we do understand their strategy which is for these big megastores in a very interesting place right next door to the largest Waitrose flagship in the country. Their strategy has changed quite a lot and we have been talking to them the whole time. So it is not as if we have not taken any notice of this. We would like to keep some of these retailers and as far as we can we are talking to lots of retailers for all of the spaces we will have when we have rebuilt the town and there are some very exciting conversations taking place.
The Leader of Council stated:
You also mentioned competitive rates and we do offer competitive rates particularly when we are trying to attract people into the town and we do have a good rental strategy and I am sure that if you would like to have an ongoing conversation with Stuart he would be happy to have that.