KEEP EMMER GREEN CAMPAIGN GROUP ATTACKS LATEST “CUT AND PASTE” ATTEMPT BY DEVELOPERS TO BUILD 223 HOUSES ON FORMER READING GOLF CLUB SITE
MORE THAN 4,000 OBJECTIONS NOW LODGED BY LOCAL RESIDENTS
CROSS-PARTY OPPOSITION VOICED BY LOCAL LABOUR MP AND CONSERVATIVE WARD COUNCILLOR
For a third time developers Fairfax are seeking to build a large housing estate of more than 220 properties on beautiful park land at the former Reading Golf Club (RGC) site at Emmer Green. Their first application was withdrawn at the last minute, the second was refused by Reading Borough Council last year for being “unsympathetic to the landscape setting”, and an “overdevelopment” which would result in a “net loss of biodiversity”.
Now Keep Emmer Green, which has campaigned continuously against the plans, is once again opposing the latest version - this time to build 223 homes – on RGC’s former site. It would destroy land that has acted as a vital green lung for Emmer Green’s residents for generations.
The KEG spokesperson said: “There is nothing in this revised application that overcomes the reasons for refusing it previously. This includes the destruction of more than three times the amount of land potentially identified for development in RBC’s Local Plan, insufficient mitigation for the severe impact on the local road network, the removal of a shocking 40% of tree cover on the site and the threat of cross-border development through to South Oxfordshire, among many other reasons. Once again, RGC have merely fiddled with a fundamentally flawed plan.”
The developers recently claimed that the Council requires new properties to be built yet the most recent audit report from the Council indicates that Reading will exceed its housing target set to 2036. There is no presumption in favour of development – in fact, there is a presumption in both the Local Plan and national policy to protect green space.
On the 2nd February Reading Golf Club also contributed to articles - published in both the Reading Chronicle and Henley Standard - stating that they had “worked with the planning authority to positively address the feedback received by carefully redesigning our development.” It was far less positive than it sounds.
Within days of the deadline, RGC had started action to appeal against the Council’s previous planning decision to reject the development of 257 properties, a tactic clearly designed to put pressure on the Council to approve the most recent application for 223.
KEG believes the Golf Club have been treating the process like a game, with boxes to be ticked, while ignoring the massive impact that this will have on ordinary people. The community understands the impact that this development would have on the area with over 4,000 people objecting to the most recent plans – another record for objections in the Borough. They are also particularly concerned about the cumulative impact with the proposed development at Caversham Park.
It’s not just residents who have objected, but the regional Wildlife Trust (BBOWT), numerous businesses, three of the local parish councils as well as teachers, local councillors Clarence Mitchell and Adele Barnett Ward and the Reading East Labour MP Matt Rodda who said: “This will lead to more traffic and pollution, so I’m still opposed”.
Conservative Cllr Clarence Mitchell, representing Peppard Ward which includes the site, said: “The latest application is, effectively, nothing more than a “cut and paste” version of the previous one that was soundly rejected by my colleagues on the Council’s Planning Application Committee last year. It should therefore be rejected by them again as nothing substantial has changed within it. The permanent loss of such valuable green space within the ward, the likely effect of extra traffic on already strained roads and the adverse effect on tree cover and ecology at the site all mean the Golf Club and the developers need to entirely revise their thinking and cease their continued attempts to push this current plan through.”
In short, KEG argues these plans would change the face of Emmer Green and Caversham forever, remove swathes of open space and destroy the local environment. The position that KEG have taken is not controversial – they only ask that Reading Borough Council respects its own Local Plan, put together at some length and cost, and that they refuse the latest planning application at Reading Golf Club’s former site.
