Arborfield Community Planning Weekend

Posted on December 23, 2012 by admin

At the most recent Arborfield Community Forum, the MoD led Arborfield Garrison Landowners’ Consortium (AGLC) introduced their newly appointed masterplanners John Thompson & Partners, a practice of architects, urban designers and community planners. The master planners have been tasked with updating the previously published AGLC masterplan – which differs from the council adopted masterplan in a number of places – to produce a “practical vision” for the future development of the garrison and surrounding land.

Whilst in the past there has been limited consultation with the local residents from the developer consortium, instead taking the form of exhibitions of completed planning work as took place in December 2010, this time the masterplanners have committed to consulting widely with local residents, community groups and councils. As part of this they have organised a Community Planning Weekend on Friday 18th January 2013 and Saturday 19th January 2013 to which all local residents and interested parties are invited. As the flyer says everybody is welcome, and we would encourage as many local residents as are able to spare the time to attend. There is a full programme running on both days, but John Thompson & Partners assure us that their staff will be available throughout the weekend to talk directly to anybody who comes along even if they are unable to attend for an entire session.

Even if you can only spare half and hour over the weekend, please come along to the community centre and make your views known, this is a rare opportunity to speak directly to the urban designers who will be putting together the plan for how our small community will be transformed over the next few years.

Details of the weekend are on the following flyer, and we look forward to seeing as many members as possible at the event.

121220_Arborfield Garrison CPW Flyer

Posted in Flyers, News | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wokingham Borough Community Forums

Posted on December 23, 2012 by admin

As part of their engagement with the local communities around their strategic development locations Wokingham Borough Council has set up a number of Community Forums. So far the Arborfield Community Forum has met three times, with representatives of the Arborfield Garrison Residents Action Group being in attendance at all three.

Initially attendees at these meetings were invited, but more recently the council has decided to open the meetings to anybody who is interested, so whilst representatives of AG-RAG will continue to attend meetings to represent the opinions of our members, any member is entitled to attend the meetings themselves, and we would encourage members to do so. Often the meetings have a number of interested parties from outside the area to be developed including borough and local councillors from all the surrounding villages, representatives of the developer consortium and council officers. Few if any of these representatives actually live on the front-line of the development, and few if any of these representatives will have to live with the development outside their front doors as it is being built, and live with the completed town as we move forward.

The council is distributing the following flyer giving details of the forums and contact details to obtain more information.

Community Forums Flyer

Posted in Flyers, News | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Residents Fuming Over Plans to Rush Through Mini-Town Development

Posted on December 4, 2012 by admin

Members of AG-RAG attended the first Arborfield SDL Residents Forum for almost six months last week where the Arborfield landowners and developers revealed new planning consultants who are redesigning the master plan (again) and published a schedule indicating that they are moving to make a planning application in March 2013, whilst Wokingham Borough Council indicated that they are still working on the vital traffic modelling that underpins their justification for the road improvements.

Cllr Angus Ross, the former Executive Member for Planning made the following statement to a BBC South reporter over a year ago regarding the traffic modelling – the full report can be found here.

Given what happened in Shinfield where the developers lost patience with the council pushed ahead with a planning application, appealed and then was granted the appeal in part on grounds of non-determination from Wokingham Borough Council the Arborfield Garrison Residents Action Group today published the following press release expressing our concern, and urging both the council and the developers to work with residents to address their concerns, and ensure that residents in Arborfield do not let down by the council in a similar way.

Residents Fuming

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Latest Newsletter – March 2012

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Darren

Please find below AG-RAG’s newsletter for March 2012
AG-RAG Newsletter – March 2012

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Defence Estates Consortium and the Bypass

Posted on January 18, 2012 by admin

If you read the Wokingham Times you will see that on page three of the 18th January issue they have picked up on the comment that the MoD backed Defence Estates Consortium are unwilling to fund a bypass for Arborfield, instead suggesting that modifications to the existing roundabout would be adequate to mitigate the traffic effects. Of course this is contrary to the published traffic modelling which can be found on the Wokingham Borough Council site. The Forecast Year Results report  contains three scenarios, the first being to build no houses, the second to build houses with no mitigating work, and the third to build everything proposed in the planning documents including a bypass for Arborfield. The report makes the following conclusion in paragraph 4.4.2:

It has not been possible to demonstrate that an absolute nil detriment position has been reached through a comparison of Scenarios C and A. However,the introduction of off-site infrastructure reduces the impact of SDL development proposals on travel through Wokingham demonstrated through the assessment of ten travel time routes across the Borough. This results in a 9% increase in travel time on these routes in the AM peak period and a 5% increase in the PM peak period. Furthermore there is a clear benefit through adoption of the infrastructure associated with Scenario C demonstrated through the comparison between Scenarios C and B.

Essentially we’re told that unpublished MoD modelling indicates that a new road in unnecessary, but the published report concludes that even if every road scheme is built the required nil detriment position will not be achieved. So who do you think is right, the published report, or the secret MoD modelling that nobody has seen?

As our contribution to the article we issued the following statement to the press:

U-turn Final PDF

Posted in Comment, News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Latest Newsletter – Jan 2012

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Darren

Please find below AG-RAG’s latest newsletter – Jan 2012.
AG-RAG Newsletter – Jan 2012

Posted in News | Tagged , | Leave a comment

SDL Adoption Press and Media Coverage

Posted on October 13, 2011 by admin

The adoption of the Arborfield SDL, and the way in which Wokingham Borough Council did it continues to be reported. Alongside a significant article in the Wokingham Times this week, BBC South Today also led with the story on their bulletins on 12th October, including this report on their main evening programme:

Posted in News | 2 Comments

Arborfield Garrison SDL Has Been Adopted

Posted on October 9, 2011 by admin

As you may have seen in local newspapers or heard on local radio, on Wednesday the Wokingham Borough Council Executive voted to adopt all of the strategic development location documents including those for the Arborfield Garrison SDL.

The vote was not unanimous. The Arborfield local councillor Gary Cowan tried to move a number of amendments to the plans, resulting in the meeting being adjourned at one point whilst all the executive went into an anteroom to discuss Gary’s proposed changes in private, whilst some changes were made all of the proposals were not included and Gary voted against the adoption of the documents. We would like to record our thanks to Gary for trying to do what he could, and in particular sticking by his principles and promises to his local residents despite what we are sure was a lot of pressure from Cllr David Lee and the other members of the Executive to show a united front.

Whilst it is certainly massively disappointing that the council adopted the plans, and our neighbours in Eversley were truly incensed by the adoption given that they had found fundamental flaws in the traffic modelling, the fight is not over. Despite a truly patronising statement from Cllr Rob Stanton following a conversation he had had with his opposite number at Hampshire County Council, saying that he’d been assured that the county weren’t going to ask for a judicial review of the plans, this certainly isn’t backed up by the information coming from our neighbours in Eversley. The plans have also been adopted despite Wokingham’s own traffic survey indicating that even if they built all the planned road schemes (including a few which don’t have complete funding or plans) they still would not achieve nil detriment – in fact they indicated an average increase of 10% in journey times across the borough. The comment from Cllr Angus Ross at the meeting was that it was now up to the developers of the schemes to prove nil detriment in their planning applications – since those applications will also have to conform to SDL plans that have been proved not to achieve that there are certainly a number of battles to come.

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Arborfield SDL Adoption – Special Executive Meeting

Posted on October 2, 2011 by admin

If you submitted any comments to the recent re-consultation you should have received notification late last week of the special executive meeting called by Wokingham Borough Council on this coming Wednesday, 5th October at 7pm in the Council Chamber at which they propose to adopt the four revised Strategic Development Location documents. Despite all their comments to consult more fully, the council is again calling a meeting at less than a weeks notice.

Whilst we know it is short notice, members of AG-RAG are encouraged to attend the meeting if at all possible. As with other executive meetings questions can only be asked in advance in writing using the form linked from this page on the council web site. Each person is only allowed to ask one question, but if they are at the meeting in person can ask a supplementary question. If a questioner is absent then the question will be asked and answered. The answers will be sent to questioners in writing whether they attend the meeting or not.

If you are happy to ask one of the questions that AG-RAG would like to ask please contact us using the form on this site, if you have your own question please let us know what you are planning to ask to ensure that we don’t ‘waste’ a question by asking one that is similar to one that is already being asked.

If you need any more guidance, the following document covers our main points of contention with the SDL document as it stands.

Main Points From AGRAG

This may well be your last opportunity before the planning applications start coming in to ask questions and influence the masterplanning process, once the plan is adopted any planning applications will be assessed against the adopted plan so our ability to object to aspects of the development will be severely curtailed. We would therefore urge you not to miss out on this last chance.

Posted in Comment, News | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

As the Consultation Closes, What Have People Written?

Posted on July 27, 2011 by admin

Today what is potentially the final consultation on the Arborfield Garrison SDL closed.

Firstly our thanks go to everybody who has contributed to the consultation, we can only hope that our views will be considered and acted upon by Wokingham Borough Council. We’d also like to thank the volunteers around Arborfield and the neighbouring villages who spent time delivering flyers and knocking on doors getting the word out about the consultation, sadly the Borough Council’s attempts to notify people consisting of newspaper advertisements, and an article buried away on page 18 of a council publication that in the case of Arborfield didn’t even reach residents until the consultation was almost over was not overly successful in getting the message out judging by the number of comments we’ve received from people who only found out through our posters and flyers.

As we move forward, the usual method by which Wokingham Borough Council releases details of the consultation responses is by means of a summary document, often this groups responses into broad categories, and often the text of the letters is reduced to a sentence or two. Whilst Wokingham Borough Council will give a number of reasons as to why they do this, it does serve to hide away the sometimes strong feelings that local residents have expressed in their letters. However, with the permission of the the writers, we have posted some examples of the letters people have written on a special page. If you wish to share your letter too, please contact us and forward us a copy of your letter and we will post it there.

Our sincere thanks go to those people who have agreed to share their letters with us and a wider audience.

Posted in Comment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment