Viewpoint: Objections to Bray Lake proposals

Email Viewpoint letters to jamesp@baylismedia.co.uk or write to Viewpoint, Newspaper House, 48 Bell Street, Maidenhead, SL6 1HX.

Objecting on behalf of Residents Association

The Advertiser’s report of the RBWM Planning meeting for Houses at Bray Lake did not mention that I spoke in objection on behalf of the Holyport Residents Association (HRA) and Residents of Windsor Road. I therefore advise;

1. It is unsustainable to continue to add houses and traffic onto the A308. HRA has advised RBWM of unsustainability clauses in the NPPF which enable Borough councils to disallow unsustainable development.

2. Highways technicians are not the highways authority. The RBWM Cabinet conveys the authority, and must exercise their opinion in deciding whether or not what they are told by the highways group is correct.

3. Over many years the RBWM highways group have failed to insist that Developers conform to the requirements of the RBWM Highway Design Guide.

4. Cllr Hunt supported me in referring to my mention of the rejection by the panel of the Spencers Farm application due to only one entrance. Planning responded that ‘highways authority’ had not raised issues / had no objections. This reference demonsrates the prevailing misguided view that the highways technicians have some ‘authority’.

5. Although the land is in the Borough Local Plan for development; (and if RBWM Planning had followed the logic of my comment on the BLP about sustainability and the ways by which the NPPF allows unsustainable proposals to be dismissed, it would not have been), this fact does not mean that the applicants proposals must be agreed absolutely as proposed by them. Highway Design Guide Page 8 second last paragraph reads ‘The first stage of consultation with the Highway Authority should be to establish whether, in principle, a suitable means of connection to the existing highway can be agreed. At this stage it may also be necessary to consider the wider effects of the development on the surrounding highway network and whether, in fact, the development would be acceptable taking all traffic-related matters into account’.

6. RBWM would not be contravening any NPPF or other legal requirements by insisting on the proper junction for a development such as this, that being a roundabout. RBWM highways authority should demand that the requirements of the RBWM Highway Design Guide be applied.

7. On this planning application, and others, the RBWM Highway Design Guide has been consistently ignored, and this raises questions as to the probity of RBWM. RBWM highways group had ‘no objection’ to the application and this was verbally repeated by the planning representatives at the subject meeting.

8. It is the duty of the planning department to ensure that highways group comments included in planning’s deliverables to the panel have been assessed and if necessary corrected by the responsible cabinet councillors.

9. RBWM environment group failed to use precedent. As advised by HRA in comments on the Local Plan, a proposed development was stopped in Kent due to the predicted traffic pollution that would result. The RBWM Corporate Plan is to achieve the National Air Quality Objective in all AQMA’s by 2025. This development will worsen air quality.

ANDREW CORMIE

Chair, HRA

Making the best of the time given to us

By the time you read this letter, the shortest day of the year (December 21) will have passed.

Next came Christmas for a few days then New Year 2024 is soon upon us.

It is important that we make the best of the time given to us, especially now – fun; joy; happiness and peace with our family and friends.

Time and tide wait for no one, as music composer Willie Nelson in 1961 summed it up so well in his composition ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’. How true.

TONY D SMITH

Village Road

Dorney

Ignoring the myriad detrimental effects

In spite of Malcolm Stretton's letter in Viewpoint a few weeks ago, D. R. Cooper seems to have learned little.

A patchwork of percentages (Viewpoint, December 15) do nothing to disguise the fact that Brexit has failed and that just a couple of weeks ago, the same D. R. Cooper was so peeved with the outcome of this isolationist farce that a voting boycott of the Conservatives was on the agenda in perpetuity.

The Cooperesque cop out, as always, is ignoring the myriad detrimental effects of Brexit apart from the financial deterioration of the UK.

The last part of the latest contribution claims claims that rejoining the EU would lead to a return to uncertainty.

With respect, the only uncertainty it would bring is how large the improvement to the financial prospects of the UK would be.

JAMES AIDAN

Sutton Road

Cookham