Firstly, as those people who are on the council mailing list will know, the Arborfield Community Forum scheduled for next Thursday has been postponed. We are hopeful that the reason for the postponement is because there is something significant to present, as we are moving closer to the estimated date of a new planning application, but as yet we don’t have any more information than the reason given by the council.
Moving on, Cllr Keith Baker was elected as leader of the council to replace outgoing leader Cllr David Lee. As we highlighted previously Cllr Baker was initially unwilling to back the promise made by Cllr Lee to provide a new school in the Arborfield area to open in September 2016, so we had a question in at the meeting asking for him to give that assurance, and also to back the election commitments on the bypass, broadband provision and provision of a Post Office. We are pleased to report that on this occasion Cllr Baker backed the key commitments made by his predecessor on the school and reiterated his commitment given at the community forum to the bypass. He also said that the council offered full support to Gary Cowan’s personal commitments on broadband provision and over the Post Office. As a follow up question we highlighted concerns over what would happen to the current proposed school location in the SDL if the council places the new secondary school somewhere else, and highlighted concerns that moving the school would result in an increased number of houses on the SDL site.
At this point we’d just like to record our thanks to David Lee as he stands down as leader of the council, we’ve obviously given him some tough questioning at various meetings and in various forums over the years, but he has always been willing to talk to us as local residents and listen to our concerns. We look forward to continuing to work constructively with Cllr Baker in his new role, and with whoever gets executive responsibility for strategic development locations in his place – a post that will be announced next month.
Finally, many of you have noticed the appearance of some strange blue marks on trees in parts of the Garrison, and given the unauthorised felling of one of the trees nearby have expressed concern that more may follow. We have been liaising with Matt Melville who has received assurances from the developers that the marks on the trees are not identifying candidates for felling. The developer teams are currently tracing underground services as part of their ongoing detailed surveying of the site, and the blue marks on the trees indicate services running under the copse of trees. Thanks to everybody who has emailed both ourselves and the council about the trees, please if you see anything else going on in and around the site about which you are concerned, do not hesitate to get in contact and we can ask questions and find out what is going on.
