WOKINGHAM’S Liberal Democrats will be looking at the new draft local plan “very carefully” before making any in-depth comments about the proposals and, like their Conservative counterparts, want to encourage residents to have their say.
On the proposal for 4,500 homes on Halls Farm, Lib Dem leader Cllr Clive Jones said: “It is called a garden village, the same description they had for Grazeley.
“We would like to see what their plan is. There must be some sort of proposal like the one for Grazeley. We want to know what’s in it.”
He also wanted to see any developers behind the scheme paying for all infrastructure needed.
“We’re going to need a lot of new roads (to accommodate it),” he said. “There’s got to be a link to the M4, but we need to know who is paying for that – is it going to be Highways England, Wokingham Borough Council or the developer. Who is it?”
His deputy, Cllr Steven Conway, wanted to reassure residents that Wokingham did have a five-year land supply, which makes it harder for speculative developments to take place. This details the number of houses expected to be built per year over the five years.
The new draft local plan, which is due to go out to consultation, has come about after the rejected of a plan for garden town in Grazeley.
“We’re back where we were many, many months ago with a draft local plan. It’s going to go through another process of public comment and consultations and then they (WBC) can come forward with their own definitive local plan. We’re still a very, very long way away from the final local plan.
“Basically, Grazeley derailed the process and has put it back a long time. We’re kind of where we were a couple of years ago.
“As far as I’m aware, we’re OK on the five-year land supply at the moment, we are not under threat, but the longer time goes on, the greater the risk gets.”
He also had concerns over the rate of housing that Wokingham borough is being forced to accept by the Government. The party feels it should be no more than 600 new homes a year, and that housing should be based on local need rather than projections of population growth.
“Numbers are still far too high,” Cllr Conway said. “We’re now at real risk of approving building in areas which are, at the moment, not in flood risk areas but in a few years most definitely will if current trends continue.
“All the projections looking ahead suggest we’re going to have an extension of floodplain.
“There is a serious issue here not just about the overall numbers and the impact on local infrastructure, and whether we can accommodate the numbers that have been talked about without it having a significant impact on flood risk in many areas.
“We have a low-lying borough with many areas at risk, including areas represented by Conservative councillors.”
He added: “Every new build upstream on the Loddon Valley has a really significant impact downstream. We already have some really quite severe flood incidents in the borough and these will be made worse if ‘were actually continue down this route of building lots and lots more houses in areas that, in the future, are going to be a prime risk, either flooding or displacing significant amounts of water so that other areas flood.
“I’m very concerned about this.”
Cllr Conway felt that areas at risk could include Charvil and Ruscombe.
“This is going to be quite a serious problem in the lifetime of the local plan and I’m very concerned we’re not really addressing it. It seems as though the council is blindly proceeding without much reference to the very likely risk of much greater flooding in the future, if all this housing is approved and built.”
The Lib Dems did want to highlight the local plan’s desire to protect some parts of the borough.
“The good thing the local plan is doing is saying we need to designate over 70 areas as green space,” said Cllr Jones. “That is really good news because it gives those precious green spaces some protection from greedy developers.”
