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Town councillors question West Berkshire Local Plan for housing developments in Thatcham




West Berkshire Council’s plans to deliver more homes in the district is due to move onto the next stages, with new drafts being drawn up.

The council’s local plan review, which may bring 2,500 homes to north east Thatcham was put on hold following changes in Government planning laws.

Thatcham town councillors welcomed the postponement, with worry that the development would be too large for the town.

The western side of the Thatcham housing development plans.
The western side of the Thatcham housing development plans.

However, West Berkshire Council has said that all relevant development sites are still being looked at for consideration.

The changed law now mandates that all ‘significant extensions’ to towns or villages be subject of a 30-year vision, rather than 15 years.

This is to factor in the potential timescale of the delivery.

The plans, once voted on later in the year, will be submitted to the Secretary of State in early 2023.

As the council moves onto this new draft of its local plan review, discussions continue on a more local level among residents and town councillors.

West Berkshire Council planning and transport manager Bryan Lyttle and development and regulation service director Eric Owens updated the Thatcham Town Council, in a full council meeting on January 31, that they must now respond to the new draft, regulation 19.

However, town councillors stated that it would be hard for them to move at the pace requested by the district authority, with no feedback from their response to the previous draft, regulation 18.

Leader of Thatcham Town Council, David Lister (Lib Dem, Thatcham West) asked Mr Lyttle how the parish can be expected to respond to a regulation 19 consultation when it has not yet received feedback from its response to the regulation 18.

He said: “A year ago this council provided a response to a regulation 18 consultation. We had very little time to prepare that response.

“We had an acknowledgment that it had been received but we haven’t received any feedback.”

Mr Lyttle said the feedback received from the regulation 18 consultation would need to be approved by members before any feedback can be provided.

Furthermore, all responses will need to be released at once rather than what Mr Lyttle called a “drip feed” approach.

He said there was a “long drawn out process” in responding to people’s comments and questions.

“When local plan questions come in they are have to have formal response from the council,” he said.

He said that questions are put before the Planning Advisory Group (PAG), where each question is looked at in great detail.

“These have to be considered in their entirety and a report produced and the report that is produced is made available at the regulation 19 stage,” he added.

However, Mr Lyttle said: “It is highly unlikely that we would be so mean to wait until the regulation 19 stage and let you know.

“We will publish that as soon as we have all those answers to every single person that has responded and every single comment that has been made in relation to the local plan.”

The allocated development in the local plan, which has been compared to the size of Hungerford, is set to include a new secondary school, two new primary schools and both a country park and a retail park.

However it has been previously stated, by Thatcham town councillors, that the development will only provide infrastructure for itself and not the wider town.

Deputy mayor and Liberal Democrat councillor Jeff Brooks (Thatcham West) said: “It’s easy for us to forget, if this site goes ahead we increase this town by 25 per cent. That is an enormous increase to the town which I am not sure has the public awareness yet in Thatcham that it should have.”

A member of the public, present in the meeting, asked: “There were a number of plans that were under consideration some of them considerably more popular with residents of Bucklebury, and I believe of Thatcham.

“Have any of those been pursued since they were dismissed in the developer funded regulation 18 study?”

Mr Lyttle responded: “The council has not made its final decision on which sites will go forward in the local plan at the regulation 19 stage and all sites will be reviewed.”

Councillor Simon Pike (Lib Dem, Thatcham West) asked: “When you say all sites, is that all sites that are still being promoted even if they were excluded at the HELAA [council assessment] stage previously?”

Mr Lyttle said: “The basket of sites that were submitted at the HELAA stage for the housing and employment land availability assessment are constantly reviewed just because there are legislation changes.

“There are changes in law and we just need to keep afresh what the situation is with all of those sites.

“Things come in, go out and come in again and have to be assessed constantly.”

The proposed secondary school that would come in the north east development brought forward another issue, with town councillors questioning its benefit.

Mr Brooks said: “We might have a school that’s too small, which looks like it might be built in isolation north of the A4 when south of the A4 there is a brilliant school [Kennet] but it’s building needs redeveloping.

“That just doesn’t seem joined up to me sir [Bryan Lyttle].

“We have a school in Kennet, built in the 50s which needs redeveloping frankly, I think in quite a big way. Now I don’t hear anything in this plan that provides for that and I was quite alarmed.

“I think we are going to have to keep going on about this in the consultation to come because I think it’s a terrible mistake in this major, major expansion to this town.”

Mr Lyttle told the chamber that education matters are beyond his scope and said: “I can only deal with land use, I am sorry this is a land use plan. It’s about planning.”

He added: “Unfortunately I cannot control educational policy. I cannot control who is the local provider for that secondary school.

“I can ensure that land is made available for one secondary school that is of the appropriate size.”

Councillor Lee Dillion (Lib Dem, Thatcham North East) commented on the time allocated to the town council to form a response as not being long enough.

He said: “That’s eight weeks to shape the next 30 years of Thatcham, we have only just heard of this timeframe now. How are we, as a town council, meant to be able to get the public on board to really buy into that?”

He added that the sudden emergence of a regulation 19 draft limits the council's ability to “influence positive change”, commenting on the lack of communication from the district council.

He said: “We are a principle town council within West Berkshire and we need to open those doors of communication a lot better so that we can feed in at the opportune moments."

However, Mr Lyttle said that it may be that the allocated time ends up being longer than eight weeks.

Mr Dillon concluded by requesting more formal and private communication on the proceedings, something that will go back to West Berkshire Council for discussion.



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