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Jon Davey
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Business in Berkshire
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Response to the Draft South East Plan
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John Redwood has sent the following forceful letter in response to the Draft South East Plan for housing to the South East England Regional Assembly:
Text: I am sending in my comments on the Draft South East Plan as part of the consultation period. As a Member of Parliament I have consulted my electorate extensively about the principal issues in the plan. They are of one voice in calling for a rejection of the current planned new housing numbers for Wokingham of 10,460 for the period 2006-2026. My constituents are uniformly of this view for the following reasons: 1) Wokingham has taken huge new housing development over the last thirty years, with the massive construction of the new Earley estate, Woosehill, substantial developments in Wokingham, Winnersh, Arborfield and other villages, and the more recent phenomenon of town cramming within established settlements. 2) My constituents feel that Wokingham has done its bit to house all the people migrating into the South East, and the pressure should now be on somewhere else. They are extremely worried that there will be no green spaces left in the Wokingham area as a result of the intense pressure. New sites will entail removing the green gaps between settlements and intensifying development in existing settlements in a way that is out of keeping with the current environment. 3) My constituents are particularly cross that practically no additional infrastructure has been provided, despite the increase in numbers of people living in the district. Wokingham only has one principal East-West route, the M4 motorway. This three-lane highway, with no exits for Wokingham itself, is already grossly over-crowded and could not take more vehicles pouring onto it at morning and evening peaks. The A329M, which crosses the district, still has no bridge over the River Thames to bypass Reading and take people northwards to Oxfordshire. Without such a link the aborted motorway is of limited use. The main routes for communication between the towns and villages are single carriageway “A” roads geared to traffic volumes of the 1960s, not the hugely increased traffic volumes of the 21st century. The railway line too is greatly stressed by the pressures upon it. There are only three trains in the morning peak times taking people eastwards to adjacent working centres or to London, far from sufficient for the potential number of users. Wokingham only has a stopping service to London which takes sixty five minutes to travel the thirty eight miles involved, which, when combined with the very poor service frequency, makes it an unattractive option, driving more people onto the roads. 4) Wokingham is already short of water and is threatened with drought orders. We simply cannot keep on absorbing more people and more homes with the demand for water that they create, without the construction of a major reservoir facility. Some of my constituents have actually found their taps run dry at busy times, owing to the large number of additional users added to an inadequate network. 5) Paradoxically, overdevelopment has also led to flash flooding. Covering over too many of the natural water meadow locations, which have acted as a means of absorbing heavy rainfalls, has led to flooding into people’s homes and business premises where flooding did not occur before. Any further development is likely to intensify these pressures at the same time as increasing the number of people without a proper water supply. 6) Recent health developments in Berkshire have reduced the number of hospitals in Reading from two to one and have failed to expand the Royal Berkshire Hospital sufficiently to provide the number of beds required. There is already a shortage of specialist care in a number of important medical areas. Again, it is not possible to keep adding new homes and new potential demand without first remedying the woeful inadequacy of the current health service. 7) The district is already very short of open space for leisure, sport and other recreation. The Council has attempted to preserve the green area but this is under pressure at the margins from new development. Schools are short of playing fields already, the Wokingham football club site has been developed and there is pressure to develop the cricket ground as well. The failure to supply sufficient green recreational areas is becoming a major worry for my constituents. 8) Most of my constituents feel that regional and national Government ignores their strongly expressed views. For years, my constituents have been saying that Government should make some improvements in infrastructure capacity before forcing new development upon the district. Instead, at each successive plan review, the demands have come for more homes than Wokingham wishes to see without any supporting increase in the road, rail, health, educational and recreational infrastructure. It is not possible to solve the problems of transport by mode or shift. We are short of capacity of all kinds and there is simply not the rail capacity to shift onto, even if people wanted to. Before any new houses are built in the district, it is vital to come forward with proper plans to provide the road space that buses and cars need, and to go through a democratic process to secure approval for improvements in road capacity, before contemplating additional housing. Similarly, it is vital to put in additional water capacity before any new homes are built, so that we can offer to people a decent water supply throughout the district without the current pressures upon people at a time when there seems to be plenty of rain but apparently a shortage of collected water. In addition, we need to put the investment into additional beds and additional consultants in the local hospital system before contemplating a single new home. People will feel even more let down by South Eastern regional Government if this universal view of my constituents is not put forward and does not carry the day. What use do they have of regional Government, they will ask, if the region conspires with the central Government to insist on more houses without the roads, railway lines, hospital capacity, schools, water supply, sewage disposal and recreational facilities that the existing population need, let alone the increasing population that Government wishes to place upon us. For further information: John Redwood on 07711 486 555 |
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