WHO owns the Sandleford housing site??? Options

[Bofem]

The 'sustainability' study is a total load of rubbish. Sandleford scored poorly because it was furthest from the centre of Newbury ( the fact that the site is next door to the retail park does not count apparently ) and because the landscape around the development was considered to be 'valued'

Sounds like the ideal place to build.

[Andy Capp]

The 'sustainability' study is a total load of rubbish. Sandleford scored poorly because it was furthest from the centre of Newbury ( the fact that the site is next door to the retail park does not count apparently ) and because the landscape around the development was considered to be 'valued'

The Retail Park doesn't have a bus station, a train station, a taxi rank, a cinema, and as much night life as the town centre.

[dannyboy]

The Retail Park doesn't have a bus station, a train station, a taxi rank, a cinema, and as much night life as the town centre.

Yes but Sandleford scored nothing for being close to the retail park, ( other amenities such as the college etc ) whereas other proposals which are just as far as Sandleford from the centre were not penalised as heavily....

[Andy Capp]

So the sustainability study was ballsed up?

[dannyboy]

So the sustainability study was ballsed up?

It did not seem consistent. Outside consultants working to EU regulations....

[Richard Garvie]

I thought it was the council's own sustainability study?

[dannyboy]

I thought it was the council's own sustainability study?

Councils had to do them. EU thing.

[gel]

Related article here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-20...n-book-set.html

[eternalriver]

I like the Sandleford plans.

I'm one of only a handful of Wash Commoners who actually walk and run accross Sandleford. As a green-field it really doesn't have much to recommend it. You can only walk accross on the foot path, there is no public access to the woodland and that green in the field, well that's what farmers call crops and you'll get a good shouting-at from the farmer if you let your dog run about there - and quite rightly. The development will preserve all of the woodland and create a public park, so as a place to walk it will be far superior, and if the S.106 money is spent well it'll be a country park to be proud of.

In terms of biodiversity, monocultures of field-beans, rape, and barly support pretty-much zero wildlife, and modern farming has no use for hedges so there's very little left of what once would have been a decent wildlife corridor through Sandleford. There's also very little in the way of mamals that might compete with the phaesant shoot. In contrast, housing estates are really rather rich habbitats, and if the estate is integrated well with the parkland and the areas of copse are connected with hedges and integrated with the Enborne riparian habitat then the biodiversity will be fantastic.

As for sustainability, that really all depends on how well the development is designed, and that's why it's so grievous to see our elected so-called representatives courting the nimmby vote when they should be lobying for a well-planned quality development with well-designed access roads, community centres, and green spaces. I'm so not-convinced by the talk of grid-lock - if the Wash Common blue-rinsers don't want affordable housing built near them, I just wish they'd have the honesty to come out and say it. People have to live somewhere.

Simon Kirby, your speling [sic] is appalling. I'd rather see people removed before countryside and open space. People need space.

[Andy Capp]

Simon Kirby, your speling [sic] is appalling. I'd rather see people removed before countryside and open space.

Hou du u pripose wie du thaht?

[On the edge]

Seems Sandleford made the national press. Mother's wry comment -seems to be about protecting the fictional home of a bunch of fictional rabbits - glad I've moved away, never did think many Newbury people had much of a grip on reality!

[Andy Capp]

Seems Sandleford made the national press. Mother's wry comment -seems to be about protecting the fictional home of a bunch of fictional rabbits - glad I've moved away, never did think many Newbury people had much of a grip on reality!

Yes, they are a unique subset of the human species.

[Simon Kirby]

Simon Kirby, your speling [sic] is appalling.

*sigh*

I'd rather see people removed before countryside and open space. People need space.

If you're into ethnic cleansing you could always go live in the Balkans, plenty of space there I understand.

As for Sandleford as recreational open space, your comment is typical of someone who's never actually taken a walk there. It's currently a footpath across a field. You have no right to access the farmland or woodland. However, the Sandleford development preserves all of the areas of copse for public access, and creates public parkland on pretty much all of the interesting landscape south of the footpath including the Enborne riparian margin, and if the estate is designed well even that will be a pleasure to walk through, and if the S.106 money is spent well there'll be a cafe in the parkland for tea and cake.

[Simon Kirby]

An emotional plea from Watership Down author, Richard Adams in yesterday's Telegraph.

Watership Down follows a band of anthopomorphic asylum-seeking bunnies as they migrate from their Berkshire homeland at Sandleford to the Hampshire downs. The neo-zionist Hazel, radicalised by the El-ahrairahn fundamentalist Fiver, leads the band to establish a settlement at Watership Down. This brings them into conflict with the sustainable community of Efrafra who allow only very limited brownfield development within their existing settlement boundary and who are very much opposed to the illegal occupation of the downs by the Sandlefordians and their establishment of settlements in an area of outstanding natural beauty. The novel ends with the murder of the Efrafran planning enforcement officer Woundwort which presages the urbanisation of the downs and the sprawl of Efrafa.

[On the edge]

Brilliant! Our planning policy dictated by fiction - you couldn't make it up. Anymore than the amazing turnaround by the LibDems - who permitted and even warmly supported the Technical College, Hospital, Vodafone all of which could have been built even more easily on 'brown field sites' rather than eating into green belt.

[blackdog]

Brilliant! Our planning policy dictated by fiction - you couldn't make it up. Anymore than the amazing turnaround by the LibDems - who permitted and even warmly supported the Technical College, Hospital, Vodafone all of which could have been built even more easily on 'brown field sites' rather than eating into green belt.

To be fair they did fight against Vodafone building on the green belt in Shaw - but the U turn is still in place, they are now suggesting that the houses should go in that same green belt rather than on the Sandleford site they were once so keen on.

[Exhausted]

Brilliant! Our planning policy dictated by fiction - you couldn't make it up. Anymore than the amazing turnaround by the LibDems - who permitted and even warmly supported the Technical College, Hospital, Vodafone all of which could have been built even more easily on 'brown field sites' rather than eating into green belt.

I do agree, why should some old numpty whose claim to fame is that he wrote, amongst other things, a story about rabbits, get national coverage for his claims about spoilng a beauty spot which is not open to the public, the inferrence in the published articles is that the whole site will be built over.
Providing WBC get their act together when the planning applications fall on their desk then we may get a new countryside park just out of town, in public ownership along with housing which has to be in the best possible location for major dwellings.
The opposition, in favouring North Newbury just haven't thought it through. Any development there will have to be ribbon development along the A339 and is really short of amenities to support that type of housing and residents needs.

[gel]

From the letters page of today's Daily Telegraph:
__________________________________________

"SIR – The economic motivation behind the destruction of the site near Newbury that inspired Richard Adams’s Watership Down (Comment, December 17) is lamentable.

Around Newbury, an acre of greenfield land is worth £7,000. When permission is granted for housing, its value increases to £700,000. For their development of over 100 acres, the landowners will make about £70 million.

The financial incentive to redevelop under-used sites within the town is far smaller since building permission already exists. Within the town of Newbury there are sufficient unused sites to meet our housing needs. However, planners, egged on by rich and powerful property interests, have biased the planning process so that it favours large greenfield developments.

The battle between town developments and the destruction of the countryside is hopelessly rigged in favour of the latter.

Dr David Cooper
Newbury, Berkshire "

[blackdog]

The financial incentive to redevelop under-used sites within the town is far smaller since building permission already exists. Within the town of Newbury there are sufficient unused sites to meet our housing needs. However, planners, egged on by rich and powerful property interests, have biased the planning process so that it favours large greenfield developments.
Dr David Cooper
Newbury, Berkshire "

I would like to know where in Newbury they could fit in 2,000 houses - on top of the hundreds of flats and houses that are already planned and included in the LDF.

[Simon Kirby]

From the letters page of today's Daily Telegraph:
__________________________________________

"SIR – The economic motivation behind the destruction of the site near Newbury that inspired Richard Adams’s Watership Down (Comment, December 17) is lamentable.

Around Newbury, an acre of greenfield land is worth £7,000. When permission is granted for housing, its value increases to £700,000. For their development of over 100 acres, the landowners will make about £70 million.

The financial incentive to redevelop under-used sites within the town is far smaller since building permission already exists. Within the town of Newbury there are sufficient unused sites to meet our housing needs. However, planners, egged on by rich and powerful property interests, have biased the planning process so that it favours large greenfield developments.

The battle between town developments and the destruction of the countryside is hopelessly rigged in favour of the latter.

Dr David Cooper
Newbury, Berkshire "

Dr David Cooper is the Secretary of the Liberal Democrat Action for Land Taxation and Economic Reform, which describes itself as a group promoting and campaigning for a more sustainable and just resource based economic system.

Dr Cooper lives in Garden Close Lane off the Andover Road, and the Sandleford development is within a couple of hundred metres of his capacious back yard.

This is the street scene on Dr Cooper's road. I don't suppose he has it in mind that the town centre brownfield development would look like this.