Well the elections are well and truly over and the Tories and Lib Dems have put away their promises and posturing on planning applications like the Reservoir and Pumping Station at Bath Road. Grant Schnapps, Coalition Minister for Housing and Planning did not commit to saving the green space and even went on to indicate that housing needs to be built on areas like the Reservoir, free from "red tape" and bureaucracy. Does that mean Planning Applications Cttee's and Appeals.
It has been left to local Labour Councillors like Pete Ruhemann who has a great history of successfully campaigning against development on green space. Who needs Alok when Pete is on the case!
His letter below to the Planning Inspectorate explains it all why we should oppose development on the Reservoir and Pumping Station.
Planning Inspectorate,
3/20 Temple House,
2 The Square,
Temple Quay,
Bristol BS1 6PN
Dear Sirs,
APP/E0345/A/10/2128186 and APP/E0345/A/10/2128188/NWF:
Reservoir and Pumping Station Bath Road Reading
I am writing as a Reading Borough Councillor for the neighbouring ward of Southcote and a member of the Planning Applications Committee to explain the basis of my support for the Committee’s decisions on these two applications and to urge that the appeals be rejected.
While the appellant makes much of the fact that the officers’ report recommended acceptance of both applications, the Committee felt that a number of issues failed to be addressed, or in some cases failed to be addressed fully, in that report and took a considered, and unanimous, view that there were numerous valid planning grounds on which they should be refused.
I would like to make a number of points in explanation of this perspective, and would be happy to elaborate on these at the Public Inquiry:
1. The reservoir site is a historic, verdant feature of that part of the Bath Road, rich in biodiversity and making a major and distinctive contribution to its environs. Neither I nor the great majority of those objecting to the present proposals believe that the site can remain as it is and not be subject to development, but we would want and expect that development to respect and reflect these key characteristics of the site, as indicated in the 1996 Draft Planning Brief which is accepted as a material planning consideration. Unfortunately that is not the development which was proposed by the applicant and which is the subject of these appeals.
2. This is mainly because the proposal represents an overdevelopment of the site. There are several measures of this:
a. The Draft Planning Brief suggests the site should yield “around 80 units”, which should be 2- or 3-bed houses, and if one were to take a 50% split between those, that would equate to 200 bedrooms. The actual proposal is for 96 units, the “80-96” in the formal description being a presentational device. Of the 96 units proposed, 8% are 1-bed apartments, 32% are 2-bed apartments, 12% are 2-bed houses, 29% are 3-bed houses, and 19% are 4-bed houses) equating to 251 bedrooms, an uplift of just over 25%.
b. The Draft Planning Brief says the buildings should normally be no more than 2 stories high. The proposal includes blocks that are 2.5 stories and 3 stories high, adversely impacting both neighbour amenity and the setting of the listed building.
c. The Draft Planning Brief calls for “high quality urban design, including landscaping and incorporating existing mature trees and hedgerows”, but the proposed design does not seek to incorporate existing mature trees and hedgerows except at the margins and indeed mentions instead “new structural trees”. The appellant argues that the proposal “provides a clear enhancement in terms of publicly accessible open spaces” but that is only because the site is not in principle publicly accessible at this time: significant vistas of open space can be enjoyed from the Bath Road and elsewhere, and would be lost in this development.
d. The Draft Planning Brief calls for the embankments, which are major features of the site, to be retained if possible. In arguing that development may cause the embankments to become unstable, the appellant seems to be more seeking to develop the site to the maximum than giving consideration to engineering works that might enable the embankments’ retention.
3. I have no issue with finding alternative uses for the listed water tower, but the proposal to seat the tower, which currently sits on a green bank leading up to the reservoir itself, on a concrete apron overshadowed by the visual clutter of other buildings, detracts seriously from understanding of the tower’s previous role and historic significance, and I believe is in conflict with the Council’s policy on the setting of listed buildings.
4. A key aim of the Council’s SPD Sustainable Design & Construction is to “limit and respond to the effects of climate change by reducing energy consumption, encouraging the use of renewable sources of energy and managing the demand for water and finite resources”. The document does go on to note that one of the barriers to achieving these objectives is the perception that they incur substantial additional costs, but that BREAM has established that major performance improvements can be obtained at little or no additional cost. But even if there is, as the appellant contends, an initial cost premium, the need to contain the effects of climate change is not going to go away, and it would be would be wrong and not in accordance with planning policy local or national to compromise standards in this development because of short-term financial considerations.
5. It is very clear from the ecological survey that was carried out after the Draft Planning Brief was approved, and from much subsequent observation by local residents, that the ecological impact assessment submitted with the application was deficient, in failing to mention much of the valued vegetation cover and a number of species that are known to be present on the site. I will leave to those more expert than myself to argue this point in detail, but would like to register that having seen some of the other material I was shocked and disappointed when I read the Entec survey prior to the meeting of the Planning Applications Committee and saw the narrowness with which the consultants had interpreted their brief.
As noted above, I accept that this site cannot remain as it is and will be the subject of development. I believe that it would be possible to design a development that would respect the key characteristics of the site and be broadly acceptable to local people. The previous M.P., local elected Councillors and local campaigners have repeatedly called on Thames Water and their agents to enter into a dialogue about the shape of that development, but that dialogue has been refused. I very much hope that the Public Inquiry will accept that the present applications are not acceptable and signal instead that such a dialogue should, in the interests of the land-owner as well as those of the local community, now get under way.
Yours sincerely
(Cllr.) Pete Ruhemann
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