George Davidson has followed up his previous e-mail with the following offer:
Dear Mr Rutter,
Reading my email on your website, I realise I may not have been 100% clear.
The Secretary of State considers the design of all of these kinds of large developments. That gives us an opportunity to opportunity to lobby the Secretary of State to amend the design. As the Sec of State is (currently) Labour I would be more than happy to help you in this process.
Do let me know if I can help in this process.
best wishes,
George
We have responded as follows:
Dear Mr Davidson,
Thank you for your original reply and for your follow up e-mail as well.
Whilst the individuals within our residents group may have their own personal political views, our residents group itself is entirely non political and we would welcome any support you can provide us, including the lobbying of the Secretary of State.
So that our position is also 100% clear (to use your phrase), we are not against development per se. And we are not against any development in Arborfield per se. Indeed, many of us have realised for some time that if / when the MOD closed the Arborfield Garrison, it was likely to become a prime development site. So we wouldn’t stand in the way of development “behind the wire” as it’s been labelled, as long as the development was carefully planned and fully funded with robust S106 guarantees.
However, we are totally and utterly opposed to any development of the beautiful countryside, green fields and open spaces in Arborfield. We are encouraged with your statement that you “believe the priority should be to build on brownfield land in the first instance”, and would like to lobby the Secretary of State to this effect i.e. that any development in Arborfield should start only after the MOD has vacated the Garrison site, and that any development should be restricted to the brownfield site that they have vacated – as I said above, only the site that is currently “behind the wire”.
So, thank-you once again for your offer of support and I look forward to hearing from you as to how best to take this forward quickly and effectively.
Regards,
Martin Rutter on behalf of Arborfield Garrison Residents Action Group
