As you may be aware, the catalyst for this group being formed was when Wokingham Borough Council published their SDL masterplan document for the Arborfield Garrison SDL. Whilst for everyone who lives in and around the Garrison the prospect of the Army moving out has always been on the cards, and replacement with housing the most likely possibility, pretty well everyone assumed that it would be a development of the land behind the wire, as had been shown on previous proposals. It was therefore rather a nasty surprise to find that Wokingham Borough Council had included parts of the playing fields that were, and still are well used by both the civilian and military families who live here – indeed before the inevitable Bank Holiday rain set in today there were families enjoying the open space near the tennis courts over the weekend, as there often is when it is sunny. This proposed development of “area B” served to bring home what was about to happen.
Over the intervening time we have had several assurances from various politicians over what will happen to “area B”, however the key thing that Wokingham Borough Council have not done, is to remove the contentious part of area B from their own document, as a result every time a new set of consultants come along and a new masterplan is issued, the same argument over “area B” comes up again.
Last week, members of the parental reference group working with the council on plans for the new school were shown a plan indicating the location. The plan was under a confidentiality agreement at that point, but following a request from the reference group the document has now been put in the public domain and can be found on a number of the Facebook pages discussing the school, or by clicking on the image here. Aside from interest over the school location, it is worth taking a look at what is happening elsewhere. Once again Crest Nicholson have kicked out John Thompson and Partners who ran the extensive community planning weekend in 2013, and brought in the Ian Darby Partnership (Northern) based in Newcastle to master plan the site once again. As always happens, if you look at the plan, “area B” is once again marked as residential developable area, although on this plan it’s areas BB1, BB2, CC and K. Granted this is labelled as the “Masterplan Diagram without Constraints”, but the area is clearly marked.
If you look at it from the point of view of the developers if you ignore all the marketing fluff around garden village principles into which an area like that fits really well, the area of parkland in those parts is pretty easy to develop, certainly compared to the building demolition they’ll need to undertake elsewhere on the site. If they take a chainsaw to the trees they’ve marked with blue dots – apparently only to mark the location of services – they can slap up a load of houses quickly and get them selling to finance the rest of the development, and stuff the existing residents. Since we’re already here, the garden village principles aren’t really for our benefit anyway, much better to build on the park used and enjoyed by the people who are already here in order to provide more SANG area and more open space in other parts of the development where they will be making their money.
Sadly that is the kind of short sighted view often taken by developers who are primarily interested in building and selling their houses for the maximum profit whatever the effect on the existing community, the kind of attitude that produced their previous planning application that suggested sprinkling a few traffic lights around the area would counteract the effect of thousands of extra new residents being dropped into a semi-rural area. What they miss is that the existing residents are the people who will form the basis of the new community their marketing department and the council keeps going on about. Surely if you are wanting these people to build this new community, repeatedly antagonising them by not addressing obvious traffic problems, and repeatedly proposing to build on parks used by the existing residents is exactly the opposite of what you want to be doing?
We’ll see in the coming week quite whether common sense has prevailed and the developers have been realistic about the traffic effects of their development, and about retaining amenities used by the existing residents, but given this plan, we won’t be surprised to find ourselves once again disappointed.
Deja Vu?
As you may be aware, the catalyst for this group being formed was when Wokingham Borough Council published their SDL masterplan document for the Arborfield Garrison SDL. Whilst for everyone who lives in and around the Garrison the prospect of the Army moving out has always been on the cards, and replacement with housing the most likely possibility, pretty well everyone assumed that it would be a development of the land behind the wire, as had been shown on previous proposals. It was therefore rather a nasty surprise to find that Wokingham Borough Council had included parts of the playing fields that were, and still are well used by both the civilian and military families who live here – indeed before the inevitable Bank Holiday rain set in today there were families enjoying the open space near the tennis courts over the weekend, as there often is when it is sunny. This proposed development of “area B” served to bring home what was about to happen.
Over the intervening time we have had several assurances from various politicians over what will happen to “area B”, however the key thing that Wokingham Borough Council have not done, is to remove the contentious part of area B from their own document, as a result every time a new set of consultants come along and a new masterplan is issued, the same argument over “area B” comes up again.
If you look at it from the point of view of the developers if you ignore all the marketing fluff around garden village principles into which an area like that fits really well, the area of parkland in those parts is pretty easy to develop, certainly compared to the building demolition they’ll need to undertake elsewhere on the site. If they take a chainsaw to the trees they’ve marked with blue dots – apparently only to mark the location of services – they can slap up a load of houses quickly and get them selling to finance the rest of the development, and stuff the existing residents. Since we’re already here, the garden village principles aren’t really for our benefit anyway, much better to build on the park used and enjoyed by the people who are already here in order to provide more SANG area and more open space in other parts of the development where they will be making their money.
Sadly that is the kind of short sighted view often taken by developers who are primarily interested in building and selling their houses for the maximum profit whatever the effect on the existing community, the kind of attitude that produced their previous planning application that suggested sprinkling a few traffic lights around the area would counteract the effect of thousands of extra new residents being dropped into a semi-rural area. What they miss is that the existing residents are the people who will form the basis of the new community their marketing department and the council keeps going on about. Surely if you are wanting these people to build this new community, repeatedly antagonising them by not addressing obvious traffic problems, and repeatedly proposing to build on parks used by the existing residents is exactly the opposite of what you want to be doing?
We’ll see in the coming week quite whether common sense has prevailed and the developers have been realistic about the traffic effects of their development, and about retaining amenities used by the existing residents, but given this plan, we won’t be surprised to find ourselves once again disappointed.
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