Plans for Marlow Film Studios refused after marathon debate

Multi-million pound plans for film studios near Marlow have been rejected by Buckinghamshire Council.

Marlow Film Studios, proposed for greenbelt land next to the A404 in Little Marlow, was considered at Thursday’s Strategic Sites Committee.

The six-hour meeting in Aylesbury was attended by more than 100 people.

Councillor Alison Wheelhouse (Independent, Beaconsfield), who proposed the studios be rejected, said at the meeting: “This proposal is just in the wrong place.”

She said Marlow was a ‘beautiful place’ - ‘the jewel in Buckinghamshire’s crown’ – and that the studios would cause a ‘significant’ impact on traffic and harm to greenbelt land in the area.

Cllr Peter Cooper (Wing, Lib Dem) said the plans were ‘brilliant’ but added: “The problem we have is that it [the studios] is probably in the wrong place and that’s really the decision we’re faced with.”

A motion to approve Marlow Film Studios was proposed by Patrick Fealey, Torycouncillor for Buckingham West, who said its economic benefits should be given more weight.

However, councillors decided the plans’ harms outweighed its benefits, with eight voting to reject it and four abstaining for Cllr Wheelhouse’s motion.

Ahead of the meeting, Buckinghamshire Council planning and transport officers had recommended the studios project be refused.

Officers cited ‘significant’ harm to greenbelt land as well as worries over a worsening effect on parking in Marlow.

They had also raised questions over ‘uncertain’ figures over job creation.

And councillors at the meeting representing wards immediately next to the studios site reiterated many of these concerns.

Marlow councillor Alex Collingwood (Conservative), a guest speaker, said the studios plan would impact the town ‘massively and negatively’.

Fellow Conservative councillor for Marlow, Carol Heap, said the studios posed more problems for traffic on the A404, which she considered ‘one of the most, if not the most, congested roads in Buckinghamshire’.

Committee member, Conservative councillor Richard Newcombe (Wendover, Halton & Stoke Mandeville) asked representatives for studio developers Dido Property Ltd, why they had ‘sought the conflict’ caused by its location.

Mark Schmull, planning consultant for the developers, said: “To be perfectly honest, if there was an easier site we would have picked it.”

Mr Schmull said the location in Little Marlow had been identified as the best from 126 other sites across 22 local authority areas.

Factors such as proximity to transport links including the Elizabeth Line at Maidenhead and the A404, he said, had increased its viability.

Speaking on behalf of the plans, Marlow Film Studios CEO Robert Laycock said: “Are we perfect? No. Are we wildly better than the alternative? Yes.

“What other economic powerhouse is going to transform a disused bit of landfill into a place of opportunity?”

Part of the studios site was used as a quarry and landfill.

He urged councillors to consider Marlow Film Studios not as ‘another studios’, but as a ‘world class’ film production base with a training academy for young people ‘at the very centre’.

One of the developers’ key arguments were the claimed opportunities it would provide for young people which, at the meeting, were echoed by Buckinghamshire College Group CEO Jenny Craig.

Former British Film Institute CEO (BFI) Amanda Nevill also spoke at the meeting in favour of the studios.

And several Hollywood directors, like Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron and Love Actually director Richard Curtis, had also leant their voices of support prior to the meeting.

However Richard Sherwin from Save Marlow’s Greenbelt, a campaign group against the proposals, called out the studios’ celebrity ‘cheerleaders’ and said there was no ‘Love Actually’ for the studios from people living near its site.

The decision by Buckinghamshire Council can be appealed.