The Next Arborfield Community Forum

Posted on March 9, 2013 by admin

Don’t forget, the next Arborfield Community Forum takes place this Monday, March 11th at 7pm at the Henry Street Garden Centre in Swallowfield Road. Please note that this is a different location from what was originally proposed, primarily as a result of the numbers of people turning up for the highways meeting taking Wokingham Borough Council rather by surprise. The agenda will include an update following the highways meeting in February, followed by an update on the development itself from Tracey Coleman, followed by a session to decide what topics to focus on at future sessions.

The minutes of previous meetings of the community forum are available from http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/communities/communityforums/arborfield, along with a copy of the presentation from the special highways forum available from http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/planningcontrol/planning/masterplanning/sdls/?assetdet3729016=233261&categoryesctl4982640=3071.

RoutesThe graphic here is probably the bit of the presentation that most people were concerned about, and is a diagrammatic representation of the approximate routes a bypass could take. The map diagram deliberately only shows main routes, so it is worth clarifying where they sit geographically.

Option A is the “do nothing” option. Option B is a long bypass directly connecting directly to the end of the relief road around the South of M4 SDL at Shinfield, it then would take a path a long way from Arborfield but would have a significant effect around Farley Hill – rejoining the existing A327 at the junction with the proposed new access road into the Arborfield SDL. Option C would avoid Farley Hill and would run past Greensward Lane and Arborfield Court, it would meet the A327 again at the existing roundabout between the Garrison and the village itself. Option D would run very tight behind the houses in Chamberlain Gardens and Melrose Gardens, and alongside the recreation ground, effectively closely following the existing public footpath. Whilst this would bypass Arborfield Cross itself the extra traffic would still use the existing A327 past the houses further down the Reading Road. Option E is effectively another tight pass of Arborfield but on the eastern side, running behind the Coombes School and across the fields between Arborfield Cross and Langley Common Road.

The other really important point, especially given the confirmation this week of the information the Garrison Chaplain gave at the community planning weekend about the retention of housing by the MoD here to house troops returning from Germany to Aldershot, is that a significant number of military personnel who would currently walk to work on the base will now be working down at Aldershot and living in housing here. The bypass will have no effect whatsoever on them as they will all be driving south through Eversley. Whilst we have consistently highlighted the issue of Arborfield, with the ongoing military housing at Arborfield even after the garrison itself has gone, coming up with a viable solution for Eversley is as important as ever. On top of this as the councils own figures show just building a bypass around Arborfield would have knock on effects elsewhere in the area on the roads that haven’t been upgraded.

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Arborfield SDL Highways Forum

Posted on February 20, 2013 by admin

We have just returned from the Arborfield SDL Highways Forum. Firstly can we say a big thank you for the fantastic turnout, a turnout so big that it had the Wokingham Borough Council staff struggling to find enough seats and left many attendees standing during the meeting. Can we also thank our friends from Eversley Matters who came along, together with a number of people new to the development from the Farley Hill area and around who as the councils modelling shows will also be impacted significantly by the development. Hopefully the turnout tonight showed both the council and the developer representative who was standing quietly in the corner observing the whole meeting the level of feeling in the area.

We will publish a full press release in due course, but there were a couple of questions that came up during the evening that the council weren’t able to answer but which we have the information to hand. Firstly being who are the developers:

ArborfieldDevelopersThe slide here is taken from the presentation the developers gave and shows the multiple landowners and how they are inter-related – you can click on the image to see a larger version. All but one of the landowners are formed into a consortium, the Arborfield Garrison Landowners’ Consortium – this consists of the MoD land represented by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation along with much smaller holdings from the Aegean Trust and Mr and Mrs Kenyon, together with Wates Developments. The rest of the land in the Finchampstead part of the development is owned by the local Marino Family Trust who for a variety of reasons are now operating separately but in cooperation with the other landowner consortium. The expectation is that they will submit a separate but linked planning application. You can see from the diagram that the two groups are also employing separate sets of consultants, which is one of the reasons that the John Thompson and Partners presentations have been fairly vague about the southern part of the site including the Hogwood Lane Industrial Estate expansion.

As was mentioned by Cllr Keith Baker at the meeting, we in AG-RAG already have channels of communication open with the council, it is worth stressing that we are named in terms of the Strategic Development Location, but our members are drawn from the surrounding villages also, so if you live in Barkham, Finchampstead, Eversley, Farley Hill or any other areas affected by the development we are happy to take your views and put them forward when we meet with the council. Please sign up to our mailing list using the links on the website, or follow our updates on social media.

In terms of the other questions, perhaps the biggest question that wasn’t addressed is how the council schedule fits in with the developer schedule. Those of you who attended the developer led Community Planning Weekend will recall that they are working towards an outline planning application in March. That planning application has to show how they will mitigate the effects of the development to achieve nil detriment. As we were told tonight the council figures to allow them to prove nil detriment will not be complete until May, and even then may be revised. As those who attended the first day of the Community Planning Weekend will remember the developer response when challenged on exactly this point by Cllr John Kaiser was to say that they will go ahead anyway with their own figures to prove nil detriment. Given the comments by Cllr Baker tonight about the success or otherwise of developer appeals, we remain deeply concerned and call on the developer and the council to work together for the good of the residents.

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IMPORTANT REMINDER: Arborfield Community Forum Transport Meeting

Posted on February 17, 2013 by admin

It may be half-term, but important meetings for the SDL continue. Don’t forget that there is the special transport forum meeting this week, on Wednesday 20th February at 7:30pm in the Garrison Community Centre. The sole focus of this meeting is on transport issues, so this is your opportunity to come and talk about the traffic effects on the surrounding villages of Arborfield, Farley Hill, Swallowfield, Barkham, Finchampstead, Eversley, and all the well known bottlenecks. It is important to get as many people as possible from as wider area as possible to ensure all the issues are properly recorded! For example there is not much point in having a bypass around Arborfield if the traffic then comes to a grinding halt in Eversley.

Before attending the meeting it would also be worthwhile taking a look at the current Wokingham Borough Council Park and Ride Strategy Consultation as alongside the more large scale proposals to replace the frequently flooded Park and Ride at Loddon Bridge the strategy includes a proposal for a “Micro” Park and Ride as part of the SDL at Arborfield.

As always representatives from AG-RAG will be at the meeting, but thanks to the opening up of the Community Forum meetings any interested resident can attend, and we would encourage as many of you as possible to come along.

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Arborfield Garrison SDL Report Back Presentation

Posted on February 5, 2013 by admin

For those people who were unable to attend the report back session last Wednesday, John Thompson and Partners have prepared a PDF of their presentation with the photographs of members of the public removed for privacy reasons, that can be distributed to allow others to see the results of the planning weekend. We are also grateful to Alison the Arborfield Parish Clerk for passing on the web sized copy of the PDF to be distributed.

The presentation gives a bit of background on the developers, then covers the discussions on the weekend, and finally goes over the JTP illustrative masterplan, and the commitments made by the developer for the future development of the site and the process they will follow.

JTP Presentation

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Taking a Look at the 2011 Census

Posted on February 2, 2013 by admin

One of the biggest concerns shared by residents both inside and outside the SDL boundary is the impact on local traffic of both 3,500 extra homes at Arborfield, and also the effect of the existing Army housing losing the army places of work.

As part of the 2011 census a question was asked about the methods people used to get to work – those results have now been published, and the Guardian Datablog team have put together an excellent visualisation of the data. This makes really interesting viewing and highlights the problem when you focus in on Arborfield Garrison.

ArborfieldGarrisonWalkersThis first screenshot shows the percentages of people walking to work – note the military housing on the Garrison is actually split between two areas on this map, with the accommodation on Baird Road between Badgers Mount and Penrose Park being included in the Arborfield Cross section. What it shows is that 20-50% of residents walk to work – that’s more even than the numbers of residents in central Wokingham who walk, and is very unusual for this area. Even though the MoD is proposing to retain housing on this site, they aren’t retaining the base. The personnel housed here will be travelling to other facilities – i.e. they will be leaving and returning to the site by road.

CarUseCensus2011If you take a look at the same map for those travelling by car or van, you can see a corresponding dip in car commuting compared to the surrounding area with the garrison area falling into the same category for car commuting as central Wokingham, with 15-30% of residents commuting by car as opposed to 45-60% of residents in the surrounding areas. It would be reasonable to assume that with the garrison gone whilst there may be some local walkable jobs residents here would have similar numbers driving as for other villages with large housing estates such as Finchampstead, Shinfield or Three Mile Cross at 45-60% (although note the 60-75% of driving commuters in the northern part of Finchampstead).

Screen Shot 2013-02-02 at 3.28.35PMSo what is the answer. The answer usually offered is to make public transport – in this case the local bus service – more attractive. Take a look at this map which is the figures for all public transport which includes those local residents who take the train. The whole map is one uniform colour indicating less than 15% of people use any form of public transport. The same map for bus travel only is even worse, less than 7%. Looking at the actual figures, Wokingham is pretty good for bus usage at 2.4% across the borough putting it mid-table (the figure for Arborfield Garrison itself is currently 1.17%), but however you look at it expecting public transport to seriously impact on people wanting to drive in and out of the SDL is at best pretty optimistic. The expectation is that the new residents who will move into the the SDL will all have a rather different attitude to public transport than those already there and who live in the surrounding area. The simple fact is that unless something changes drastically in the next few years building the new houses at Arborfield will have a significant impact on all the surrounding roads, in particular the A327 heading north through Arborfield and south through Eversley, and also the secondary routes to Wokingham through Barkham and Bracknell through Finchampstead will also get significantly more traffic. No amount of repeated traffic studies or playing with the figures is going to change that, the roads have to be able to cope otherwise the whole area will just grind to a halt.

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Press Release Following the John Thompson and Partners Report Back

Posted on February 2, 2013 by admin

Following the report back meeting at the Garrison Community Centre on Wednesday, the Arborfield Garrison Residents Action Group have issued a press release. The JTP report back broadsheet can be found on their site here.

Gathering reactions from across our membership our members were pleasantly surprised, especially at the number of residents points and concerns that had been taken into account in the revised illustrative master plan. Members also gave a cautious welcome to the commitments the developers made via the report back presentation to continue consultation with the residents and in particular to work with the local council and other interested parties over the critical infrastructure issues that we have repeatedly highlighted.

Although a commitment was explicitly made by the developers to work with Wokingham Borough Council to deliver a relief road, residents are still concerned that the developers committed over the planning weekend to push through to submitting a planning application in March despite Wokingham Borough Council now expecting their traffic data to be ready in May, and having now started arranging a new traffic forum to discuss the issues.

Previous executive member Cllr Angus Ross made the following statement to the BBC well over a year ago in October 2011:

We reiterate that the traffic issues need to be resolved before any planning application is given – as the planning weekend showed this issue is critical to people in the SDL and the surrounding villages, and whilst we share the frustration of the developers at the slow progress producing the traffic data from Wokingham Borough Council, getting a viable traffic solution and buy in on that solution from the local residents is a vital element of delivering a successful and sustainable development. Fudging and forcing the issue on the basis of out of date or incomplete data will be to the long term detriment of everybody in the area.

Our full statement is as follows:

Cautious Welcome

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Arborfield Community Planning Weekend Press Coverage

Posted on January 23, 2013 by admin

For those who were unable to make it to the Arborfield Community Planning Weekend the new Wokingham Times has a nice little summary of what happened with comments from Claire San Martin of John Thompson and Partners – the master planners (rather than the developers as stated in the article).

It is also pleasing to see a commitment from Cllr Keith Baker to attend the next meeting – weather permitting – since as a quick glance through this page shows alongside missing the planning weekend he has yet to actually make it along to any of the meetings of the Arborfield Community Forum.

JTP also now have a page on their website for Arborfield. This page is updated as their involvement in the project progresses and should contain digital copies of the report back and any subsequent documents they produce.

Don’t forget the report back meeting is only a week away on Wednesday January 30th and 7:30pm in the Garrison Community Centre.

Update: Cllr Keith Baker has been in contact to point out that he did not hold the portfolio for the SDL developments at the time of the first community forum, and had only recently been given the portfolio at the time of the second so it was decided that Cllr Angus Ross would lead the second community forum as planned rather than Cllr Baker take over the already planned meeting. We would like to apologise to Cllr Baker for the incorrect statement.

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Arborfield Community Planning Weekend Review

Posted on January 19, 2013 by admin

First of all, can we thank all the local residents who took the time and trouble to come along to the weekend and participate. As I’m sure you will have picked up the developers and planners are not local, and they are primarily talking to the professional staff at Wokingham Borough Council who again are not local, so an event like this is really important for trying to ensure that the voices of the people who actually live here are heard in the process.

The sessions today largely mirrored the sessions yesterday, with a similar heated discussion over a variety of key points during the Problems, Dreams and Solutions exercise which once again ran on for a lot longer than the facilitators originally intended. This was then followed by a number of planning workshops looking at different aspects of the new development.

From the feedback we have gathered so far there are a number of points that have come up:

Firstly, there have been generally positive comments about John Thompson and Partners who ran the weekend. Whilst they are new to the process, compared to previous planners and planning processes they have shown themselves to be much more willing to engage with the local people, and in particular have an open discussion about why they have made certain decisions about the design. It is worth highlighting that their ongoing participation in the process is not guaranteed, the developer consortium could decide to employ another firm for the later stages who will not offer the level of consultation that John Thompson and Partners have offered. We would obviously be most disappointed were the developers to take such a retrograde step and revert to employing planners who do not engage with the local community. Also of course the proof of how much the have listened will be when the final plan is presented as part of the outline planning application in March.

Another point that has been raised is the disappointing lack of attendance from key stakeholders from Wokingham Borough Council. Whilst there was a good showing from the various local borough councillors, and David Lee appeared at the beginning of the second day, Keith Baker who is the executive member responsible for the development was notably by his absence, and many of the senior planning team from the council staff were also notable by their absence. This led to a good deal of frustration where residents questions could not be answered because these key people were not there.

We have also been told about issues over the promotion of the planning weekend. Whilst flyers were delivered through many doors, key areas around the SDL appear to have been missed, in particular Nine Mile Ride. It would be useful to hear back from local residents as to whether they received a flyer through the door or not. There was a notice printed in the Wokingham Times in the 9th January issue, but you’ll be forgiven for having missed it as it was on the first page of the classified adverts after the arts news and motoring pages rather than in the main part of the newspaper as previous notices have been.

We are in the process of gathering any other feedback people may have about the weekend, so if you have any comments you wish to make please let us know.

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Arborfield Community Planning Weekend Day 1

Posted on January 18, 2013 by admin

Despite the heavy snowfall during the day, the first day of the Arborfield Community Planning Weekend went ahead as planned. Alongside an almost full turnout from the developers and their partners a small number of local residents made it to the community centre. There was almost no representation from Wokingham Borough Council, indeed even David Lee who was supposed to give a welcome stayed away due to the snow. For pretty well the whole afternoon the locals were outnumbered by the developers and their partners.

Although it stuck to the structure laid out on the flyer, the timings didn’t exactly match, not least because the “Problems” section of the Problems, Dreams and Solutions exercise took a lot longer than expected. Following that those present broke into five groups to look at particular aspects of the design of the development, and what will need to happen to build the new community.

Unlike previous consultations where the local residents have been presented with a completed plan, the process is much more of a consultation, so for example there was a debate about the contentious placement of a primary school on current green space where the tennis courts are currently located. All of these discussions and the opinions of those present we are assured will go into the plan. Further work will be done in the sessions tomorrow between 12pm and 4pm.

It is really important that as many people as possible put their opinions in at this stage, before the overall design is ‘locked in’ by a planning application. By far the best way to do this is by coming along and participating in the workshop. For example one of the workshop groups today sat down with a map of the area and the members of the consortium responsible for roads and actually went through with them the numerous traffic problems, and explained to them as local residents what the issues were, giving a different view on the raw data the formal traffic surveys produce.

If you can only spare a shorter period of time you can come along and talk directly to one of the many representatives of the planning consultants who are running the workshops. You can also submit any thoughts you may have via e-mail through the address on the flyer: ia@jtp.co.uk

The feedback and ideas received at these sessions will be incorporated into a more detailed masterplan that will be presented to the community on Wednesday January 30th at 7:30pm.

The developers are keen to put in a planning application in March, despite Wokingham Borough Council not expecting to be providing a traffic plan before May. From discussions today it was suggested that the developers will go with their own figures if the work from Wokingham is not forthcoming. The developers are moving to a tight timescale so it is vitally important we influence their design before the design is finalised and the planning application goes in. Experience in Shinfield shows that whatever they have said in the past Wokingham Borough will not be able to stop a developer pushing an unsatisfactory plan through on appeal, so if you can please try and attend tomorrow.

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REMINDER: Arborfield Garrison Community Planning Weekend

Posted on January 17, 2013 by admin

Don’t forget, tomorrow from 2pm to 7pm and Saturday from 12pm to 4pm is the Arborfield Garrison Community Planning Weekend at the Community Centre on Princess Marina Drive/Sheerlands Road. As local residents this is your major and possibly only opportunity to put your points across in person to the people who will be planning the future shape of our community.

Please remember that the developers will be recording how many people turn up and from where, so it is important that you come along even if you can only spare a short period of time across the two days and ensure that your presence and views are recorded. You cannot write a letter for this one, you need to be there!

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