Today I am meeting the Secretary of State for Communities and local government in the Commons to put Wokingham’s case for a slower rate of building. Last year the housebuilding rate shot up to more than twice the required amount under the local plan, with obvious strains on our road network and local communities living nearby.
I have two proposals to put to him. The first is Wokingham’s large contribution to the national housebuilding effort should be reflected in decisions by Planning Inspectors,. They should not grant more permissions outside the agreed areas in the local plan.
The second is that Wokingham should have a lower build rate for the next local plan period.
March 20, 2019
Thanks for this, we are creaking a bit.
March 20, 2019
Dear Sir John, I too believe that our town is being over-developed and put the case in the recent consultation regarding the Woodcray proposals on Finchampstead Road. Every few hundred new houses guarantee double that number of cars, more traffic jams, more roadworks while gas, electric, phone and water works are installed in the roads, and less chance of getting a timely doctor’s appointment or a school place for our children.
Please do you have any rough figures for the constituency’s population (people or houses or both) for 1997, 2010 and 2019 so we can see how successive Governments have contributed to the problem. We moved here in 1986 and the town centre developments are welcomed but not so many surrounding housing projects, it feels like we’re being suffocated and surrounded.
March 20, 2019
Agreed, too many houses, not enough road capacity, schools and surgeries struggling.
Indeed we are now more like a huge Urban development than an expanding Market Town.
We are now joined up with Reading, Earley, Winnersh, Bracknell and Ascot in one unending line of development, with no green spaces in between to separate those area’s.
With much, much more development in the pipeline, all we can do now is to slow down the rate at which we will eventually become suffocated, and our identity as a Town lost.
Such a shame It was at one time a very nice area in which to live having escaped from London.