Agenda item

Prue Bray has asked the Executive Member for Strategic Highways and Planning the following question:

 

Question

At the July Executive meeting, the Executive resolved to approve a supplementary estimate of £400,000 to “support the site assessments process for the Local Plan Update”.    That is a rather general statement.  What exactly is this additional money being spent on?  Please cover in your answer how much of the assessment of all the 260+ submitted sites it covers.

 

Minutes:

Question

At the July Executive meeting, the Executive resolved to approve a supplementary estimate of £400,000 to “support the site assessments process for the Local Plan Update”.    That is a rather general statement.  What exactly is this additional money being spent on?  Please cover in your answer how much of the assessment of all the 260+ submitted sites it covers.

Answer

The supplementary funding is required to assess the opportunities for sustainable development across all of the promoted sites.  In particular, it will allow master planning of larger and more complex sites, specifically land around Grazeley, Barkham Square, which is directly north of the current Arborfield Green development, and around Twyford. This will ensure we are fully aware of the opportunities and constraints to sustainable development, including in-depth consideration of infrastructure delivery plans, including a Borough wide infrastructure delivery plan, which is a key message coming from residents.

Future consultation on the Local Plan Update will be supported by the detailed assessment of all sites, some of which will be recommended for allocation for specific uses as part of a balanced strategy.  I cannot give you the assurance that it will be used for all 263 sites because some of them are for one house, two houses, etc so we are spending that money on assessing the major groupings of sites which have been put to us.  As you know if we do not properly assess those when they come to be Examined in Pubic if we have simply cast one aside because what we should not be building there because of x, y or z we would not stand up to the developers.

 

Supplementary Question

I am very pleased that he has mentioned the masterplanning because Keith Baker wrote a very interesting letter in the Wokingham paper last week in which he suggested that that money was for masterplanning although I have not seen any Council documents that say that.

 

What I am concerned about is that you do indeed, for precisely the reason that David has said, have to assess all the sites properly against a set of criteria otherwise you will be torn to pieces by developers.  Is it not pre-judging the issue to masterplan on some specific large sites before you have done the sustainability appraisals of all the sites?  Are you not going to get into trouble from other developers who have other sites who think you are pre-judging the issue?

 

Supplementary Answer

No I do not think so because we will be looking at all of those points.  If you actually look at the plan of the Borough where the sites are there are some very large groupings put in there.  There is a very large grouping to the north of the A329(M) which is in a totally unsustainable location and I would suggest that is because there is no means of access onto that road and that is why we are looking at the sort of major ones.  The major ones happen to be the ones that I have read out the names of.  There is no alternative to that but all sites will be looked at from a sustainability point of view and from a point of view of what infrastructure is needed on those.

 

We have as you know over the 30 years before this existing plan was operating we were building an average 800 houses per year we had £5k contribution from each of them.  We now get a £27-30k contribution and we got no affordable housing because there was an amazing fact that if they built 14 houses they did not contribute and it was amazing that they all came in at that figure.

 

So the sustainability is vital but we are determined that if we have to build this number of houses, and this is what I would ask people to challenge and question, but if we have to do it we have to do it in the most sensible way in the most sustainable locations.