Arborfield Garrison Residents Action Group

We are currently distributing a new flyer to as many homes in the Garrison area as we can. The flyer consists of one side of A4 highlighting the recent scoping study application put in by Entec and the Defence Estates consortium promoting the development here, and giving details on how we can make our comments known. On the other we have included an annotated copy of the most recent Entec Masterplan map which we have previously highlighted here.

You will see that the window of opportunity for this one is short – so we would urge as many people as possible to try and get comments in by the closing date of 23rd April.

The flyer also includes details of key upcoming dates. Firstly on 26th April we are having a gathering at the Community Centre on Sheerlands Road. This will consist firstly of putting together a more formal structure for our group, which in particular will enable us to be able to better interact with the other residents groups and action groups across the borough, and communicate more effectively with Wokingham Borough Council.

The format of the second part is in somewhat of a state of flux – initially we were hoping to organise a question and answer session with the candidates for election to the Arborfield Ward, as we thought there would be many similar questions that residents would want to ask each candidate in order to make their decision on who to vote for – there is just such an event for the constituency election running on Sunday 25th April 2010, 7pm at the Wokingham Methodist Church Rose Street, to which all the major prospective parliamentary candidates are going. Sadly in Arborfield we will not be able to do the same as one of the candidates has said that such a meeting “might be counterproductive as we are past the consultation stage and all that will be said is vote winning crowd pleasing comment when whoever says it has no influence in the next stage of events”, and as we are concerned not to be seen to favour any particular candidate we feel we cannot have such a meeting with one of the three candidates unhappy about it.

What we propose to do instead is to give an update on the current state of play with regards to the development. In lieu of a question time arrangement we have asked each candidate – Gary Cowan for the Conservatives, Steve Bacon for the Liberal Democrats and Joan Huntley for UKIP – if they would instead provide a statement on their position that we can give at the meeting and post on the website.

Following that meeting, there is a Parish Council Meeting at the Village Hall on Tuesday 4th May at 7:30pm and the General and Local elections on 6th May where for those in Arborfield the polling station will again be the Village Hall. A vitally important date for your diary is 7:30pm on Thursday 27th May, at the Wokingham Borough Council offices at Shute End. This is the meeting where the council executive will decide whether to adopt the masterplan documents after the consultation process, hopefully taking into account the numerous submissions that were made by ourselves. As with any other council meeting the public are allowed to attend – anyone who lives or works in the Borough is also allowed to ask a question as part of the thirty minutes of public question time at the beginning of the meeting. Details for how to submit a question, when it should be submitted by and other details can be found on the “Public Question Time at Meetings” page on the Wokingham Borough Council site.