Firstly, thanks to everybody who took the time to come along to the community forum last night. The developers were speaking a lot about community partnership throughout their presentation, so the more people they have an opportunity to meet, and from the widest cross-section, the better the picture we can give them of the things that are important to us as a community.
Similarly thanks to everybody who participated in the Arborfield Bypass Relief Road consultation. As Cllr Keith Baker highlighted the council put a lot of effort into publicising the consultation, and in providing staff to answer questions across the period at a number of exhibition locations across the borough. We have previously been critical of Wokingham Borough council doing little to inform residents of important consultations, however this consultation shows that when it is highlighted people participate, and a clear message has been given, that people across the borough prefer route B as opposed to the council favoured option A by a significant margin – 74% favoured route B compared to 16% for route A. Cllr Baker and Cllr Cowan both indicated that with such a clear mandate the council would move forward with route B instead.
Moving on, the main event of the evening was a presentation followed by a question and answer session with representatives of the Arborfield Garrison Landowners Consortium, who are responsible for the northern part of the development, 86% of which is the MoD land that is currently occupied by the garrison, and the remaining 14% being two parcels of land, one owned by Robert Kenyon, the other by the Aegean Trust. The Marino Family Trust who own the remainder of the develop-able land in the SDL were represented at the forum meeting, but did not speak publicly.
The main speaker at the forum was Scott Black who is Crest Nicholson New Business Director. We see this as a positive move, with the developer putting forward senior staff to talk directly to residents, rather than sending someone more junior, or a third-party company to engage with the community. As a number of residents found, Scott and his colleagues were happy to engage on a one-to-one basis after the end of the formal meeting.
In terms of the actual presentation, as would be expected at this point it was a bit light on tangible details. A lot of the broad principles we’d heard before, and as was highlighted in the questioning there were a couple of confusion points such as the change to quoting densities in houses per acre whilst previous presentations quoted in houses per hectare. Just to be clear the new reduced density figures that were being quoted were as the question asked at the meeting suggested are about 35 houses per hectare – by way of comparison Cllr Baker highlighted at the meeting that Penrose Park is built at a density of 30 houses per hectare.
Scott suggested that since the number of houses was unchanged the reduction in density would be achieved by some “tweaking”, suggesting that the configuration of roads on the development could help. Considering the significant interest that the team of surveyors who have been busy across the site all week, were showing in the contentious area B and the existing playing fields we would like to remind the developers that those areas have been a matter of great concern for existing residents throughout many of the previous consultations. The Arborfield Garrison SDL is unique amongst the Wokingham Strategic Development Locations in that it has a significant number of residents already living within the boundary, residents who were provided with existing green space and community facilities by being given access to garrison facilities such as the playing fields and the existing community centre. Therefore if the plans take away those facilities they need to be replaced.
Another part of the presentation highlighted previous Crest Nicholson developments, and Scott urged residents to look at other developments to get an idea of what they provide. The main example used in the presentation was the Monksmoor Farm development in Daventry. Whilst it allowed Scott to show some key principles, it is worth considering some of the differences. Scott himself highlighted the size – Monksmoor Farm is significantly smaller – however another key point is the location. If you look at a map of Daventry, Monksmoor Farm sits to the North East of Daventry town centre, alongside existing estates, and fronting directly onto the existing A425 distributor road around the centre of the town. The town centre is easily walkable from the new development, the M1 and mainline railway are close by – essentially Monksmoor Farm is an urban extension development, that has a lot in common with the north and south of Wokingham SDL’s around here.
As an example it doesn’t give any real indication of how Crest Nicholson might solve the transport issues that are critical to the success of the development at Arborfield. Here it is unrealistic to suggest that people could walk into Wokingham town centre, almost five miles away. Daventry has a variety of local buses serving the estates and further afield, Arborfield has one bus service that meanders through a number of other local villages to get to Wokingham and Reading. Looking at the results of the parish council consultation very few people use the existing bus service, and would consider using it. As Cllr Simon Weeks and a number of others highlighted, building a significant development at Arborfield means properly addressing car usage and the roads – the laugh that went up from the community forum at the suggestion of significantly increasing bus and cycle usage shows that producing a transport plan that doesn’t acknowledge extensive car use is just a naive fantasy. The members of the consortium continue to talk about creating a great place to live, but it’s much harder to do that in a semi-rural new town development like Arborfield than in an urban extension project like Daventry, and it will cost a lot more money to do it.
So in conclusion, we certainly saw the forum as positive, and a step forward. Since Wokingham Borough Council chose not to cut housing numbers when they had the opportunity, as Scott highlighted, the houses are coming. We look forward to ongoing consultations, and commitment from Crest Nicholson and the rest of the developers to put in the money and resources needed to make this development work both within itself, and with the surrounding existing communities of Arborfield, Barkham, Finchampstead, Eversley and Farley Hill.
