Bucklebury Parish Council has hosted a meeting with Olivia Bailey MP.The Chairs of Midgham, Woolhampton and Stanford Dingley were also present as was District Councillor Chris Read. The MP was appraised of the parishes’ views on the proposed 2,500 home development in NE Thatcham. While this development would only physically impact on 30 or so acres of Midgham the ramifications on the communities in all 4 parishes on traffic, the environment and increased pressure on existing infrastructure would be considerable. The majority of the residents of this development would join others in West Berks in commuting to work. With the A4 and Floral Way already backed up at peak times hundreds of additional cars will flood into Upper Bucklebury and Cold Ash en route to the M4 and A34. There is no provision in the Local Plan to alleviate this with new roads or enhancement to existing ones. Those commuting south will join the already 30min plus queues at Thatcham level crossing as there is no plan for the development to contribute to a desperately needed bridge across the railway and river.

On the environment the development is in the setting of a National Landscape(AONB as was). The Local Plan’s Sustainability Appraisal is badly flawed as amongst other things it fails to show, as it should, that environmental considerations have been given equal weighting alongside economic and social ones. Olivia’s attention was drawn to the lack of a legally required Environmental Effects assessment which might be one of the grounds for a future legal challenge.

There is every chance that when the first new homes of this development are due to be occupied in 2031 the necessary schools, medical facilities, community centre and required new sewage treatment plant will not have been completed as even the preliminary work on addressing the funding of this infrasruture has not been done.

In noting all these concerns Olivia asked to be kept in close touch with the parishes on progress towards the eventual adoption of the Local Plan by WBC and beyond.

Other topics raised included the new Royal Berks Hospital. The MP said a new hospital was essential and she was confident of the robustness of the business case. She has met with the Health Secretary and will continue to lobby him on the RBH until the review on its future is complete.

BPC brought up speeding and Olivia learned that Bucklebury had amassed 650,000 datapoints via its Speed Indicator Device deployments. One showed a motorist doing over 90mph in a 30mph limit at 3pm! Although Bucklebury was now part of Community Speed Watch it was proving a struggle to find volunteers to man the ’speed guns’. More enforcement was needed.

The concerns of Midgham PC were aired about potential industrial ribbon development along the Thatcham-Theale corridor. Stanford Dingley briefed Olivia about many incidents of raw sewage polluting the streets after heavy rainfall and Thames Water’s failure to get to grips with the issue. Finally Woolhampton cited several examples of where the handling of retrospective planning by WBC could be called into question.

This proved to be an informative and useful initial meeting with Olivia on behalf of the residents in the southern part of her constituency.