On Thursday, Wokingham Borough Council will be voting on the new Local Plan, which sets the council’s planning policies and allocates sites to accommodate the quantity of housing that the government obliges us to approve.
All Local Plans involve difficult choices. I can understand why residents near proposed major development sites are dismayed. I wish we could devise a Local Plan that upset no one, but, unfortunately, that is not possible.
The new Local Plan improves, where possible, on the draft plan we inherited from the previous Conservative administration. Rooks Nest Farm, allocated in the draft for 250 dwellings, is no longer included for housing. We could withdraw it because the council is the owner. Draft plan sites in private hands are a different matter. They can safely be withdrawn only with the landowner’s acquiesce, or if circumstances materially change to make them less suitable, or if a demonstrably better site of equal capacity can be delivered at least as quickly.
When we formed the new administration in May 2022, we began a review of Hall Farm (the principal site in the draft) and other promoted major sites, reassessing each in relation to national and local planning policies and technical appraisals undertaken by council officers. On those grounds, Hall Farm proved to be the best of the major sites promoted to the council by landowners.
We then worked with the principal landowners at Hall Farm to produce a scheme that I hope councillors will find more acceptable than the draft version. Hall Farm now has fewer dwellings but still delivers a new secondary school. Contrary to what many of us feared, it will not increase flood risk; it should, indeed, reduce it. And it makes possible the creation of a large new country park for the enjoyment of the local community.
There are also borough-wide new benefits that we have been able to secure. The Plan now includes bold new policies on energy efficiency in new homes. It increases the Affordable Housing contribution required on bigger sites from the current 35% to 40%. This change demonstrates the council’s commitment, which I hope is cross party, to help provide homes for those for whom market housing is out of reach. The new plan also designates more than a hundred Local Green Spaces, which have a level of protection analogous to Green Belt in the countryside. And it identifies thirteen larger areas of Valued Landscapes, where any development must respect local special features and characteristics.
The current Local Plan is becoming out of date. We need a new Local Plan if we are to protect the borough from inappropriate speculative development, which usually comes with much less infrastructure to support it than does development through a Local Plan.
We can stop the borough’s exposure to inappropriate speculative development only by agreeing a new Local Plan. I hope all councillors will recognize their responsibilities and vote for the new Local Plan on Thursday evening.
Stephen Conway is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council
