The Hall Farm site, threatened with massive housing development in the Council’s Local Plan, lies within Shinfield and Arborfield. So other areas, you might think, would be spared. Not so - this site proposal has dire implications for nearby neighbourhoods, not least Lower Earley and Winnersh.
Impact on Winnersh
Winnersh would be particularly affected. It’s all bad news, starting with schools. The catchment area for Winnersh Parish contains five secondary schools: Bohunt, Emmbrook, Forest, Holt and Saint Crispin’s. Names on those schools’ waiting lists almost quadrupled between 2016 and 2023, from 121 to 447, according to WBC’s figures. Here’s the problem: families living in Arborfield Parish have access to the same schools, and they would include residents of Hall Farm housing. The Local Plan schedules well over 2,000 households to move in before a new secondary school is due to open on the site in 2037. For Winnersh families, this could only aggravate the waiting list problem further. Disappointingly, the Local Plan provides for NO other new secondary school in the whole of Wokingham borough.
Like other parts of the borough, the Brookside GP practice, covering Winnersh, Earley and Lower Earley, struggles to cope with increasing patient numbers. Its patients per full-time GP figure rose 36.6% between 2014 and 2022 (NHS General Practice Level information published online). WBC’s local plan envisages a branch GP surgery on the Hall Farm site, but the Arborfield Green development also promised a new GP surgery, and that hasn't happened. Until Hall Farm GP surgery is built, if it is built at all, residents would have to look elsewhere, and a nearby possibility would be Winnersh Surgery, less than a mile from the planned development site.
What about traffic? The impact of increased traffic from the Hall Farm site at busy times would be considerable. Northbound traffic, including drivers heading for Winnersh Triangle rail station, would first need to join Hatch Farm Way, and then add to congestion approaching the Showcase roundabout. Vehicles heading from the site towards Winnersh rail station or the Sainsbury's supermarket would funnel into Kings Street Lane, already very slow at busy times.
Roads ‘already at capacity’ - Lib Dem councillor
How concerned are local councillors in Winnersh by the prospect of massive development around their patch? Their responses to the 2021 version of the local plan show they were very concerned. The Parish Council rejected most of the Winnersh sites proposed in the 2018-19 ’Homes for the Future’ consultation. They were unsuitable, Parish councillors said, due to flood risk, impact of traffic and poor accessibility issues. The sites rejected included Winnersh Farms, where local Lib Dem borough councillor Rachelle Shepherd-DuBey raised serious issues over nearby roads ‘already being at capacity’ (Wokingham Today, October 2021). What did she have to say three years later, when WBC’s Local Plan for 4,000 houses next to her ward came before her for approval? We’ll come to that.
Winnersh objections to housing development
Winnersh councillors’ opposition to large-scale housing development because of what it means for traffic congestion echoes the view of local residents. Comments made in an outline planning application for a housing development in Watmore Lane, Winnersh make their rejection clear:
“The main single access route planned for Maidensfield and Watmore Lane poses a risk to the local area, in that traffic flow will increase on two lanes that weren’t built for this sort of use.”
“The site/location is unsuitable due to the amount of extra traffic that would be created.”
“We don’t need any more houses in Winnersh. The infrastructure in the area is not built for the people who already reside here let alone any more".
“The council’s responsibility is towards the people who live here and not some money-grabbing developer.”
The Hall Farm proposal in the 2021 Local Plan came in for particularly strong objections from Winnersh Parish Council. Members raised the impact of traffic on an already congested road network, concerns about significant development in close proximity to the flood plain, and the lack of existing active travel possibilities within the development area. Previous experiences in the borough of SDLs, the Council pointed out, highlight ‘the risk of creating motorised traffic from early occupation as no alternatives were available’, as well as pressure on existing schools outside of the development. This last point would again be a problem with housing at Hall Farm, as mentioned earlier.
Better for Lower Earley?
Lower Earley would probably get off more lightly than Winnersh. Only one of the secondary schools in the Lower Earley catchment area, Forest School, would be open to the hundreds of children that would be living at Hall Farm. Residents would probably register with GP surgeries in Shinfield or Swallowfield (there’s still no GP surgery in Arborfield, despite the thousands of new houses in the area).
Traffic would be a different matter. Lower Earley would be linked to the Hall Farm site by a bridge over the M4. This would take traffic on to Lower Earley Way, either westbound to the Black Boy roundabout and M4 junction 11, or eastbound towards the Showcase roundabout and M4 junction 10. It would also offer a route into Reading via Beech Lane and beyond. Given the greatly increased traffic volumes to be expected, upgrading Lower Earley Way to a dual carriageway might be a good idea, However, WBC’s local plan does not propose to do that.
There is one comforting factor - the M4 bridge to Lower Earley Way would be built only at a late stage in the development schedule. So perhaps by the time it’s built there’ll be enough local retail on the Hall Farm site to make driving to Lower Earley Community Centre, and the Asda supermarket in particular, less of a draw. And who knows - there could even be a doctor’s surgery at Hall Farm that residents could walk to, if you believe the Local Plan artist’s impression of the site layout.
What did Lib Dem councillors have to say?
Finally, let’s look at what Earley and Winnersh borough councillors said about the impact of yet more housing when WBC debated it this September. Cllr Hare (Lib Dem, Hawkedon) highlighted the importance of agreeing the Local Plan, and claimed it would protect the Council from inappropriate development’, according to the meeeting minutes. NB: He said, ‘protect the Council’, an interesting choice of words. Not ‘protect the borough’ or ‘protect residents’. As for Cllr Bray (Lib Dem, Winnersh), she at least appreciated that ‘some residents would be concerned about the inclusion of particular sites, or the number of proposed homes’, she said. But like all the Lib Dem councillors present, she voted for the Local Plan nonetheless. Lib Dem Cllrs Caroline Smith, De Jong and Shepherd-Dubey are not recorded in the minutes as having anything to say about what the Plan meant for their residents.
Winnersh and Lower Earley residents may not need to fear 4,000 houses going up at the bottom of their road. But the consequences in other ways of the Hall Farm development would be very real indeed.
The question is - do residents realise it yet? And do their councillors KNOW they realise it?
Pat Phillipps
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