We try to keep our Facebook and Twitter pages updated with a broad range of links to news items that may be of interest, including more general local politics articles that will affect local residents alongside national policy items that will affect the development here. So for example next week the MoD are putting on an exhibition of plans for how they are going to redevelop RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire to accomodate the people moved from Arborfield. This is important because the move of army personnel from Arborfield is entirely dependent on them having somewhere to go at RAF Lyneham.
The other big bit of news this week was the long awaited announcement of where the troops returning from Germany are going to be housed. Whilst with the closure of the base at Arborfield confirmed this may not seem to affect us, it does. The Garrison Chaplain mentioned during the Community Planning Weekend in January that contrary to what we had previously been told, no further Army housing would be sold off – with the base gone the housing would come under Aldershot. The news this week confirmed that the number of troops based at Aldershot will increase as a result of the pull out from Germany, some of those returning troops will be placed in the housing here. The big difference of course is that rather than being able to walk to the base, they will be joining the thousands of other people who daily drive down the A327, heading for the main base at Aldershot. The retention of the houses in Kelvin, Fleming and Faraday Closes along with their associated security measures will also leave residents in Penrose Park essentially cut off from the new facilities being built as part of the SDL development as the barriers across Baird Road will remain.
One of our members who lives in Finchampstead has also submitted an excellent article explaining why she joined AG-RAG for the Finchampstead Parish Magazine. One of the big issues with the development here is that the name is pretty misleading. Although it is called the Arborfield Garrison SDL or the Arborfield SDL in most places there will be no new housing built in Arborfield. All the new housing is in Barkham parish or Finchampstead parish, however conversely the vast majority of affected existing residents – unlike the other three SDL’s there are a large number of people already living within the SDL boundary – live in Arborfield.
The development, in particular the issues that local horse riders have which were discussed at the community planning weekend were also mentioned on BBC Berkshire this week as part of a bigger discussion about the safety of horse riders after a horrific incident in Winkfield where a mother and daughter and their horses were run over by a drunk driver the programme can be heard on BBC iPlayer until the middle of next week.
