Above is our new banner. I suppose you could argue that the old one, with its’ “Say NO to 4,500 houses at Hall Farm” has achieved what it set out to do. However, 3,930 houses, although a significant improvement (imagine the uproar if a mere 570 houses were to be proposed on fields near Twyford or Hurst!) it is still a HUGE number of houses on green fields that currently represent the separation between the settlements of Arborfield, Shinfield and Winnersh.
The “strapline” for the new banner and linked posters is a simple one. “The Plan’s NOT sound!” This refers to the four tests of soundness the local plan must pass at the public inspection, which we expect to happen sometime this year, probably late summer. Why do we consider the Local Plan to be unsound? Well, for a start it is seriously under costed, with we think infrastructure costs of more than £100,000 per house.
What could that under costing mean in practical terms? The most expensive part of any development for the developers, who are in this not because of an altruistic desire to deliver more houses but to make money for their shareholders, is the required infrastructure to make the houses “workable”.
The biggest cost at Hall Farm (AKA Loddon Valley Garden Village) will be a proposed new bridge crossing over the M4 to allow access beyond the site for commuters wishing to reach junction 10 on the M4 and the A329 (M) towards Bracknell. This bridge is planned for the final phase of the construction and could be 30 years (or more) away! In fact, this bridge may never get built because the money needed to pay for it is currently predicated on the developers selling enough houses to pay for it.
Assuming the money doesn’t run out and it does eventually get built, this bridge will take the thousands of cars generated by the many thousands of commuters generated by building many thousands of houses on green fields miles away from any existing public transport, over the M4 and onto Lower Earley Way. Some friends of SOLVE Hall Farm are working on a computer generated visualisation of this which we hope to be able to share soon, but for now just use your imagination. Absolute CARnage!
On the other hand, if it never gets built then the cars will clog up the existing roads, such as the B3030 Mole Road heading into Winnersh. According to this recent article in the Reading Chronicle vehicles in Reading currently average just 13 miles per hour. This makes Reading the top location in England for the slowest-moving traffic. The sluggish speed contributes to the 50 hours drivers lose annually to congestion. This plan is NOT SOUND because of the traffic chaos it will generate.
Then there is the issue of flooding. Many people are aware of the value of the Loddon Valley as a flood plain. Some people are claiming that the Loddon Valley Garden Village will somehow IMPROVE the flood plain. How? If you add nearly 4,000 houses to an area you will inevitably increase the runoff when it rains. This is a logical consequence of taking permeable fields and replacing them with impermeable roofs. So where will the extra water go?
Improve the flow of the rivers and drains and send it down stream? I suspect this may not be very welcome by the recipients. Or slow the flow and allow it to back up? Will this be welcomed upstream of the development? I think not. The only way I can think of to improve a flood plain is to make it bigger or otherwise more effective at holding water while it is allowed to slowly seep into the ground. So you might make it hold more water in balancing ponds etc, effectively increasing the volume of water in can contain in the same area, and up to a point this is working in other areas where so called “Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems” (SUDS) are being used. It is the central idea expanded upon in this Environment Agency Newsletter.
Leaving aside the ultimate conclusion of the EA report linked to above (that the cost/benefit analysis makes it "unfeasible at this time") the key issue here is “up to a point”. With climate change making extreme weather events both more extreme, and more common, the point at which any flood mitigation scheme may fail is becoming a bit of a moot point. Rising sea levels and heavier rainfall makes it less a case of if and more a case of when.
Take this example from an area known locally to flood, probably at least a bit every year, and in some years, a great deal. Showcase roundabout at Winnersh Triangle is a problem, has been as long as I can remember, and all the efforts to prevent it flooding still come to nothing when we get a heavy downpour lasting more than a day or two.
What are Wokingham Planners doing about it? Possibly not what you might have wanted or expected if this report in Wokingham Today is anything to go on.
“Winnersh Triangle between Wokingham and Reading is often subject to flooding due to its proximity to the River Loddon. Winnersh Retail Park and the Showcase Cinema car park recently became out of use due to flooding after heavy rainfall and snow across the county. Plans for a new Five Guys Drive-thru were approved in November”.
But Wokingham Borough Council has defended approving the plans after being given the green light by the Environment Agency and internal planning officers. Forgive me, but this does nothing for my faith in either Wokingham Planning Officers or the Environment Agency. Why is this a worry? Because it is Wokingham Planning Officers behind the Local Plan to put 3,930 houses next to a flood plain and it is the Environment Agency who will be giving them the "green light" to do so.
The Climate Emergency is REAL. It is happening in places like California right now and in places like Valencia recently. Do we really have to wait for it to happen here? Oh, wait a minute, the University of Reading have many experts on climate change, what do they say?
“No words. No numbers. No graphs. Just a series of vertical coloured bars, showing the progressive heating of our planet in a single, striking image. The climate stripes were created by Professor Ed Hawkins at the University of Reading in 2018. They show clearly and vividly how global average temperatures have risen over nearly two centuries”.
Super useful, thanks Professor, but isn’t it the University of Reading that wants to create this car dependent small town, miles from any public transport, and on the edge of the river Loddon Flood Plain?
Roderick Paul Stevens
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