We have now received a response from Prue Bray, who is the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate. As you may be aware she is also currently the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Wokingham Borough Council.
Hallo Mr Rutter
I am not sure how you are going to receive this reply, because I am afraid it doesn’t contain much good news for you. But I think it is much better for me to be honest with you about what has already happened and what is coming than to pretend that I can give you what you want.
I don’t know how the other people you have emailed are going to respond. What I recommend to you is that if any of them tell you they can help you stop this, ask them how they plan to do it, so that you can work out whether they are really telling you the truth. It is very tempting as an election looms for politicians to promise all sorts of things that they know they cannot possibly deliver. I am not going to do that. I realise that by not telling you what you want to hear I may very well lose your vote. If that happens I will be sorry, but I think this country needs more politicians with integrity, and so I will not – and never have – gone down the road of saying anything just to get elected.
Now to explain why I can’t promise you that it is possible to stop development on greenfield sites in Arborfield.
The Core Strategy of Wokingham Borough Council was adopted by the council at the end of January. The Lib Dems did not vote for it. We understand the need for the council to have a strategy, so that it can keep some sort of handle on development – the alternative of not having a strategy would result in a developer free for all. We disagree with some of the content, that is why we did not vote for it. But whether we disagreed or not, the fact is the Conservatives voted to adopt the strategy. That means that there is no longer any scope for fighting whether development will come to Arborfield. The number of houses for the next 20 years for the Arborfield Strategic Development Location has now been fixed at 3500 and cannot be undone. The outline of the area into which they will go has also been fixed, as has the kind of infrastructure that will come with them (schools, roads etc).
I need to be absolutely honest and open with you and say that the Liberal Democrats did not oppose the Core Strategy because it included development at Arborfield. Other parts of the strategy were, if you can believe it, much worse. It would not be fair of me to pretend either that I have been opposed to the principle of building houses at Arborfield for a long time,
or that I – or anybody else – can stop it happening. That is a very important point. The only way the Strategic Development Location can be stopped now is if the MoD decide not to sell the land. If that happens then the whole Core Strategy will be blown out of the water and that would be bad news for everybody, including Arborfield, because we will be looking at huge
amounts of infill development and concreting over even more of the countryside than is currently envisaged by the Core Strategy – and we will get far less infrastructure with that development. For example, the chances of getting a new secondary school in the south of the borough would become very small indeed.So to be blunt, the principle of development of 3500 houses at Arborfield has now been established and it is too late to do anything to stop that. But there are a few more positive things to say.
There is currently – until 23rd March – a consultation being conducted by the council into residents’ views of the detail of how things should be laid out within that Strategic Development Location outline, and there is an exhbition in the foyer of the council offices about it. You can fill in the consultation online on the Borough Council’s website. This is called the “masterplanning” stage, and will result in some documents which lay down some rules for developers. After that will come planning applications. So there are opportunities for you and other residents to help shape the development, even if you cannot stop it. Firstly you can respond to the consultation – and I would be very happy to come and talk to you and other
residents about it over the weekend, if that would help. Secondly, once planning applications start coming in, they will be dealt with in the normal way, with the standard public consultations. Although the principle of development has now been established, that does not mean that the council has to approve any old planning application that comes along, and there will
be the chance to influence the details of the plans. Again, I am happy to come along and talk to you about how to do that when we get to that stage. I do have 10 years of experience as a councillor in dealing with planning issues, which I am more than willing to use to help you try and get the best you can for your area out of this process.The final thing I want to say is about what has happened so far. From your email it sounds as though you were not aware that any of this was going on. I am not blaming you for that. The question is, why did a lot of residents in Arborfield not know what was going on, given the huge impact that the planned development is going to have on your community?
Let me lay out a bit of the history as to how things got to this point. The Core Strategy has been progressing through the system for several years and has been through multiple consultations, including with town and parish councils, one of which was Arborfield. It has also been the subject of a public inquiry (known as the Examination in Public), which took place over
several months in 2009. I know that there have been people from Arborfield involved in previous consultations and in workshops that have taken place and which I have personally attended, including one held in Arborfield last June, which included a tour of the proposed Strategic Development Location. People in Arborfield should have been better informed than most, because the person on the Executive of the Council who has been responsible for piloting the Core Strategy through to adoption from the start is in fact Gary Cowan, your local councillor. I will leave you to think about that for yourself.So, to sum up, I am sorry to have to tell you that the principle and extent of development at Arborfield has now been fixed, and the only way it can be stopped is if the MoD decide not to sell the land. Assuming the sale goes ahead – which is what the council believes will happen – then I would be happy to help you try and get the best you can out of the planning process.
Meanwhile I strongly urge you to respond to the masterplanning consultation that is going on at the moment, and I would be willing to come and talk to you about that over the coming weekend if you thought that might be useful.Finally, can I apologise for such a long email! But I thought it was important to try and make everything as clear as possible. Please come back to me if you have any further questions. And if you think it would help you to talk to other residents groups in other SDL locations, I can probably help with that too.
Best Wishes
Prue Bray
