Question
Following comments made by Coalition members on BBC radio Berkshire before the Local Election, will they please take Hall Farm off of the Local Plan Update and also ensure that relevant policies and voices are given full weight in planning matters? If I can draw attention in particular to the Arborfield and Barkham Neighbourhood Plan, plus all Policies concerned with Views Valued by Residents, those relating to Landscape and Heritage, and the advice of Wokingham Council’s Landscape Officer.
Minutes:
Question
Following comments made by Coalition members on BBC radio Berkshire before the Local Election, will they please take Hall Farm off of the Local Plan Update and also ensure that relevant policies and voices are given full weight in planning matters? If I can draw attention in particular to the Arborfield and Barkham Neighbourhood Plan, plus all Policies concerned with Views Valued by Residents, those relating to Landscape and Heritage, and the advice of Wokingham Council’s Landscape Officer.
Answer
The last administration approved consultation on the Local Plan Update Revised Growth Strategy Consultation. Through this consultation everyone had the opportunity to express their opinion on those proposals, and if they disagree to say what they would do instead.
Clearly it would be wrong of me to pre-determine the local plan process. I can assure you, however, that we will carefully review what has been said in response to the consultation before deciding on how to move forward.
Since the election the new administration had written to Mr Gove MP highlighting our concerns about the how high housing numbers currently expected on Wokingham Borough are calculated. We have also engaged with our local MPs, and we have received strong support from them on this topic. More recently the new Leader of the Council met with Mr Gove at the recent LGA conference in Harrogate, and he has agreed to come to Wokingham. Returning to the previous consultation, comments were received towards all of the proposed allocations and on other matters such as included in the consultation and on other matters such as infrastructure provision, the need for new homes, the need for new jobs and the need, as far as possible, to protect our environment and Green Belt. This includes the specific issues of landscape, heritage and other matters you’ve raised, and the Arborfield and Barkham Neighbourhood Plan.
Experience within the borough and elsewhere across the country show that we must have a new local plan. Not having an effective plan would mean loss of control or less control over where development happens. It is also much harder to invest in improvements to infrastructure such as roads and schools where the timing and location of development is driven by developers in an ad-hoc and dispersed pattern.
Supplementary Question
I’m very pleased to hear that Mr Gove is going to come to Wokingham, that is good news. However, I notice that the University of Reading is now promoting the garden village on its online website, and I am rather concerned on the northern wards rather dominating the planning section of the Council again, which doesn’t give a lot of confidence that Hall Farm will be taken out of the Local Plan Update. I would like to make the point that fewer than 4,500 houses at Hall farm would be uneconomic, so there is really no justification for not removing it. I would like to make the point that before the local election, Clive Jones made the protest about Hall Farm his own by photobombing the group photograph, and I would just like to make the point that both residents and voters will be expecting results.
Supplementary Answer
Thank you. My view is that it is totally irrelevant that I happen to be a northern Parish Councillor, I will be doing this role strictly in line with the planning rules and what we do. One of the reasons that we have been approaching Mr Gove is that we want to be able to explain to him where here in Wokingham, and there are other Councils as well who are affected, we have a good case to be able to present to him to see whether we can get a new calculation done regarding this area. One area in particular that we feel needs to be taken into account is the fact that this Council area has overprovided the number of houses for at least 6 or 7 years, as we estimate that that is at least 3,000 above what would have been needed if we were to do either the either 661 or the current 781 homes per year, and we averaged somewhere between 1,200 over that period. That will be one of the issues, and the reason for that is if we can get the recalculation then there becomes greater opportunity for us to look at the type of issues that you have raised. I do confirm that we have gone through the consultation responses and Hall Farm was in the top 6 having the greatest level of objection.