Sirs,
An outline planning application for 35 houses in an elevated position on the western edge of Aldbourne has been greeted with alarm and hostility by residents, the Wiltshire Council website rapidly notching up over 40 responses with only two in favour. The proposed development is on land owned by the multi millionaire private security boss Brian Kingham.
Objectors focus on the fact that the land is outside the village boundary where development is not normally permitted. If Wiltshire Council allows this application it would have serious consequences for villages across the county.
Residents have also expressed disbelief that the access to the site is just beyond a blind bend where traffic, frequently exceeding the speed limit by large margins, enters the village from the direction of Ogbourne St George. In his response to the application, civil engineer and Aldbourne resident, Michael Ward, systematically and effectively demolishes the assertions of the consultants employed by the developer that the access is anywhere near safe.
The majority of those opposed to the plan are concerned at the effect of the increased traffic on the lower end of Castle Street, already a bottleneck where pedestrians have to share the narrow road with large farm vehicles, school buses and Earthline trucks. The same consultants, Condon Drew, who believe the access to be safe tested residents patience by asserting that new residents would leave their cars at home and commute to Swindon by public transport, thus adding at least two hours to their working day!
Some locals feel they have been here before. Six years ago Brian Kingham applied for planning permission for an anaerobic digester – it would supply electricity to the National Grid at a time when there were substantial long-term rewards. The original planning statement claimed there would be little or no increase in farm traffic.
Disconcertingly, Roger Witts, the Highways Officer for Wiltshire concurred with this. It was left to sceptical residents to quickly unearth the truth that 10,000 tonnes of maize (necessitating 125 tractor/trailer movements in a day) would have to be sourced from outside the farm. It was also pointed out that the heat the digester would generate would be dispersed into the atmosphere, blowing its green credentials out of the water.
Frustrated at Wiltshire Council’s failure to scrutinise the application, villagers took the creative step of putting on a murder mystery in which a landowner, named Ivor Shot-Gunn, (presumably a reference to shooting parties held on the estate) was bumped off by some poisoned caviar. This imaginative approach to protest was picked up by the national press which may possibly have been a factor in the sudden withdrawal of the application.
As well as the understandable alarm at the effect the housing development would have on the village, at another level there is palpable disquiet at the timing of the application. Due to the lockdown it cannot be democratically scrutinised, the parish council being unable to call a public meeting. Pointedly, Fowlers Architects of Pewsey the planning consultants for the application, on their promotional website make a big deal of the fact that in the last year they had attended 74 parish meetings. This obviously raises the question as to why they are so keen to avoid one in Aldbourne.
The plans have been submitted while Aldbourne is still finalising its neighbourhood plan and the submission in section 5.4 of the planning policy context openly acknowledges that advantage of this is being taken by submitting the application before the Neighbourhood Plan has been completed.
There is another uncomfortable aspect to the timing. Aldbourne has been hit hard by covid-19. The last thing villagers need is the addition of further stress and anxiety in their lives. A long-time resident told me “Everyone now requires something to look forward to but this certainly isn’t it.”
There is another unintended consequence from this application. The development site has been left fallow, no crops having been planted, possibly in anticipation of the JCBs moving in? As a result it is a mass of poppies in an elevated position in an Area of Outstanding Nature Beauty and can be seen and admired from all around.
Comments on the application must be submitted to https://planning.wiltshire.gov.uk by 24 June. The full application (Ref: 20/03638/OUT) documents can be seen here:
https://unidoc.wiltshire.gov.uk/UniDoc/Document/Search/DSA,910524
Yours,
Name and address withheld by request
Marlborough LitFest – another COVID-19 casualty but outreach activities continue
