As you may be aware the date of the next Arborfield Community Forum has been changed, and the meeting will now take place on Monday March 17th, at 7pm, at the Henry Street Garden Centre.
We understand from Wokingham Borough Council that following on from the last forum the main item on the agenda will be a presentation from the representatives of the Marino Family Trust who control the remaining land in the SDL. This makes it a particularly important meeting to attend, as up to now whilst we have heard much from Crest Nicholson and the Arborfield Garrison Landowners Consortium, the Marino Family Trust have remained largely in the background.
The Marino Family Trust plans are important as alongside the balance of the proposed housing their land will include:
- An additional primary school
- A significant expansion of the Hogwood Lane Industrial Estate
- The Nine Mile Ride Extension
This means that there are a number of important questions that they will need to address, in particular how they will handle the significant increase in vehicles, in particular HGV’s that their proposed doubling of the Hogwood Lane Industrial Estate will bring. As anybody who lives along Park Lane will confirm access to the estate is already difficult, and quite regularly large lorries ignore the width limit on the bottom end of Park Lane and attempt to access the industrial estate direct from the A327 rather than going around via Biggs Lane. Having said that Biggs Lane is not ideal for HGV traffic either.
The Nine Mile Ride Extension is also of much concern to residents along Nine Mile Ride, with well founded fears that putting a direct link from Nine Mile Ride across the SDL will attract more traffic along Nine Mile Ride as a whole turning it into even more of a rat run that it already is. If the current rather circuitous route around the Garrison is replaced with a much more direct route straight onto the A327, and with a new bypass around Arborfield and another around Shinfield, Nine Mile Ride could quickly become a quick route for residents of Finchampstead, Crowthorne and beyond to get to destinations on this side of Reading without having to drive through the congested roads in the middle of Wokingham and Winnersh.
Alongside the news of the next Community Forum, we’d also like to highlight a consultation that Wokingham Borough Council is running into the Community Infrastructure Levy. This is the replacement for Section 106 money, and specifies in much more simple terms how much a developer needs to pay to the council as a contribution to cover local infrastructure around their developments – items such as community facilities, parks and new roads. The full details of the consolation are at http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/consultation/current/cilchargingschedule/ with the documents to support the consultation at http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/planning/developers/cil/ and the council is proposing to set the borough wide rate at £365 per square metre for residential development. The other three strategic development locations are being offered at reduced rates (£300 for South of M4, £320 for South Wokingham and £340 for North Wokingham) however the proposal is that Arborfield will be set at the borough wide rate. We are pleased that the council has chosen to do that, reflecting the significant additional infrastructure that a viable development at Arborfield would require, however we would encourage as many people as possible to participate in the consultation and support this rate as the evidence from the previous consultation stage is that housing developers feel that the rate should be reduced and so are quite likely to make representations like this again, as such a strong response from local residents supporting setting the Arborfield SDL at the highest rate is needed. Details of the consultation are at http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/consultation/current/cilchargingschedule/
