Membury Airfield site development gets go ahead

Plans to further develop a greenfield site into open storage in the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) near the Membury Airfield area have been approved.

The site along Ramsbury Road has had no permission to operate after a previous application had expired.

Objectors described the applicant’s actions in destroying the field and putting machinery on it without permission as ‘insulting'.

Lambourn Parish Council said the field should be restored.

“This is not conserving a site within the AONB,” said Bridget Jones from the parish council.

“The claim it improves biodiversity when it was the applicant who destroyed it is insulting.”

She said since 2018, when the previous application was granted, the number of HGVs has doubled.

“The cumulative impact of further development affects all local villages," she said.

"Yet planners say the affects are not considered sufficient.

"Residents complaints about noise, construction and out of hours working have been ignored or fobbed off.

"They have no confidence in the efficacy of planning conditions.”

Howard Woollaston (Con, Lambourn) told the western area planning committee that the applicants have made the assumption that the application will be approved.

“Membury service station is an anomaly going back to the Second World War," he said.

"No one in their right mind would consider making this an employment area if we had a blank sheet of paper today.

“I can see no justification in allowing further industrial development beyond that already designated.

"The applicants should be required to return the land to its original state and be subject to an enforcement action if necessary.”

Carolynne Culver (Green, Ridgeway) asked if the council should wait for the update of the Local Plan for West Berkshire before making a decision.

“Having read the report [around employment areas], it is clear we need more smaller sites in Newbury,” she said.

“We should wait to see what we are doing with our employment areas in general?

“This is not in an employment area currently. We should stop saying ‘well, it's near it’. The same applies to the cumulative impact. We can’t just chop something up into bits and look at it individually."

The councillors felt there was a lack of ‘cumultative’ impact assessment done on the proposal to assess amounts of traffic and the impact on drainage.

The council’s planning officers recommended the plans were approved, saying the proposed change of use is not considered to harm the character and appearance of the area or AONB subject to securing appropriate landscaping.