Both Planning Applications are In

Both the outline planning applications for the two parts of the Arborfield Garrison Strategic Development Location are now in and published on the Wokingham Borough Council website. As previously we cannot link directly to the applications because of the way the council website is set up. To find the applications go to http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/planning/services/search/ and there put O/2014/2280 into the application number box for the Crest Nicholson/Arborfield Garrison Landowners Consortium application under Arborfield parish, or O/2014/2179 for the Marino Family development of Hogwood Farm under Finchampstead parish.

There is a significant volume of documentation for each of the proposals, so we will not be making any comment on the content until we have had a chance to go through the applications in detail ourselves. As previously, if you have any comments or feedback on the applications from your own reading, please share it. These are complex documents so the more pairs of eyes we have reading them the better view of the overall picture and any issues we will be able to get.

Also, don’t forget that the rescheduled Arborfield Community Forum takes place on this Thursday, 23rd October, from 7pm at Henry Street Garden Centre, and includes an update on the school, along with presentations on both planning applications. Both applications are only open for comment for a few weeks (although we understand the council may try to extend this) and this will probably be the main chance us as residents will have to quiz both councillors and council officials, and also the applicants. Once these applications are approved certain aspects of what is going to happen to Arborfield Garrison are locked in, so it is critical that the applications are got right at this stage.

As a little bit of other news, you may have seen the comment piece we published last week having spotted Tom Curtin, CEO of Curtin & Co the consultancy hired by Crest Nicholson to push through the application, taking a leading role in a group called Caversham Residents Against Inappropriate Development, something we thought was at the very least rather ironic, perhaps hypocritical considering that his company specialises in pushing through just the kind of contentious planning applications that local residents close to them consider inappropriate. Things over in Caversham have taken a rather interesting turn in that the names of Tom Curtin and his wife disappeared off the CRAID site at the weekend, at about the same time as an anonymous newsletter was pushed through doors all across Caversham causing much anger amongst residents. One of those residents investigated who produced the newsletter via the delivery company that delivered them and traced it back not to Tom Curtin, but to Curtin & Co themselves, and he has now passed this on to Reading Trading Standards who have opened an investigation as the newsletter committed a “criminal breach” in the areas of data protection, unsolicited mail and not providing right of reply on the document/providing details of the sender. Needless to say we have highlighted this behaviour to Wokingham Borough Council and expressed our concern at such unprofessional and possibly illegal behaviour from a company that is so closely involved with the Arborfield Garrison SDL. You can keep up to date with what is going on over in Caversham on the Heights Primary School Facebook page. There is a report about the ongoing events in Caversham including comments from Tom Curtin on the anonymous newsletter in the Reading Chronicle.