THE IDENTITY of an MP that gave their backing to a proposed garden village at Hall Farm was queried by a resident at a meeting of Wokingham Borough Council’s executive committee on Thursday, November 24.
Colin Watts asked the Executive Member for Planning and Local Plan, Cllr Lindsay Ferris, about a line in the Local Plan Update report on the consultation. This looks at potential sites for house building in the borough to 2036.
In it, it states: “A local MP supported the identification of a new garden village at Hall Farm / Loddon Valley, particularly its links to the Thames Valley Science Park.”
Mr Watts said: “Most people I have spoken to assumed that Sir John Redwood was the MP referred to, but he has confirmed that he did not make this statement.
“For the sake of transparency and accountability, please advise which MP made this statement and can the Initial Consultation Outcomes document be amended to state the name of the MP?”
Cllr Lindsay Ferris said he did not feel it appropriate to identify individuals who had responded to consultation.
Mr Watts said there was a danger of the public being misled if the MP wasn’t named, especially if they weren’t neutral over the issue of where new housing should be built in Wokingham.
Cllr Ferris said if the MP wanted to, they could reveal their support. Instead, he suggested that Mr Watts wrote to the MPs, or submit a freedom of information request to the council.
A second question on the local plan was given by Andy Bailey. He said: “Given the state of the economy and the dire economical outlook, does WBC intend to ‘borrow forwards’ to enable infrastructure to be built in good time to support developments arising from the revised Local Plan?”
Cllr Ferris said: “Local authorities will need to handle financial resources very careful going forwards. However, it is important the new infrastructure gets delivered in parallel with the new development.”
Wokingham would work with developers to ensure new developments have well-planned and well-timed new infrastructure.
“In some circumstances, developers will be expected to provide this directly in accordance with legal agreements and the conditions of their permission,” he explained. “Where we collect Community Infrastructure Levy (the new name for Section 106 funding), we will also look to spend levy funds in a timely manner.
“In terms of our own capital programme, we will need to be financially prudent in terms of the extent of borrowing …. That doesn’t mean we will stop funding infrastructure or delivering it in a timely way, but it does mean we will be looked very carefully at every decision.
“We take in this respect something which I’ve no doubt all our local taxpayers will want us to do mindful of the times that we find ourselves then.”
