Hearing into core strategy starts tomorrow (Tuesday)

The strategy encompasses the council’s planning framework up to 2026, and includes plans to build up to 2,000 dwellings on Sandleford Park, pictured.
A public hearing into the document has been called by Government-appointed independent inspector Simon Emerson, who wants to know why Sandleford was chosen for development.
Plans to build on Sandleford have already come under criticism from the Say-NOtoSandleford campaign group and Liberal Democrat opposition on West Berkshire Council.
The hearing, which is open to the public and press, is scheduled to start at the Hilton Hotel, Pinchington Lane, Newbury, tomorrow (Tuesday) and is expected to last at least three days.
SayNOtoSandleford campaigner Peter Norman said that he hoped that the inspector would find the core strategy to be unsound, on the grounds that the plans to build there are unsustainable and would therefore contradict the Government’s new planning policy document, the National Planning Policy Framework, which is centred on sustainable development.
Mr Norman, who will give evidence at the hearing, said: “There are two key questions that have emerged from this process. First is whether or not the projected housing number that West Berkshire Council has put forward is actually correct? Our argument is that the council’s housing projection out weighs employment opportunities in the town. That’s not sustainable.
“The second point is that the National Planning Policy Framework says that councils should not be sitting on assets, such as employment sites. We would argue that there are employment sites that could become mixed-use areas, such as Vodafone and Faraday Road, between London Road and the canal.”
A spokeswoman for the council, Peta Stoddart-Crompton, said that the public hearing would take the form of a round-the-table discussion.
The core strategy was voted through by the council on February 14, with all Conservative councillors voting in favour of it, and all Liberal Democrat councillors voting against.
A total of 10,500 new houses will be built in West Berkshire if the core strategy is accepted by the inspector.
In the region of 6,300 dwellings in and adjacent to Newbury and Thatcham will be built, including developments at Newbury Racecourse and Sandleford.
About 1,500 dwellings are proposed for the east of the district, including Tilehurst, Calcot, Purley on Thames, Theale and Pangbourne, with some 2,100 properties to be built in the North Wessex Downs Area of Natural Beauty, including Hungerford and Lambourn.
A further 800 dwellings will be constructed in other rural parts, such as the East Kennet Valley area and in the south east of the district.