Harvest Hill 215-home application given the go-ahead despite questions unanswered

A controversial 215-home application for land south of Harvest Hill has been given the go ahead despite councillors still having multiple questions about it.

The council's planning team recommended approval for the homes on this site, known as AL13 in the Borough Local Plan (BLP).

This is part of the Southwest Maidenhead allocation, which is generally understood to mean the areas around Maidenhead Golf Course and covers 2,600 dwellings overall.

这一点是收获的一部分neighbou山道路rhood, covering 8.52 hectares. There would be 140 houses and 75 apartments, ranging from one-bed flats to five-bed houses.

At the Maidenhead Development Management Committee on Wednesday, councillors had questions that they felt hadn’t been answered.

They wondered who would be maintaining the play areas; and about the lack of a setting study that could help preserve prehistoric finds in the area and avoid heritage loss.

There had also been ‘no response’ from Thames Water as to the question of whether the sewer was able to cope with the extra strain of the new developments.

Cllr Alison Carpenter (Clewer & Dedworth East) raised concerns about a ‘dead end’ road which would make it difficult for refuse trucks to turn around; plus the single entrance/exit and what this might mean for emergency services.

As such, she proposed the application be deferred for a decision at a later date until these matters are clarified.

However, Sarah Tucker, planning officer, and Adrien Waite, assistant director of planning, said officers were ‘satisfied’ by the ecological and highways reports.

He said correspondence had been recieved from Thames Water that the company doesn’t have any concerns.

“There’s absolutely no legitimate reason to defer [because of] the lack of a Thames Water comment,” said Mr Waite. “There are no grounds there.”

Concerns were also raised by Cllr Carpenter and member of the public Andrew Hill about officer correspondence that seemed to suggest something was being ‘kept from the public’.

There was an email exchange about keeping a memo ‘off the public record’ and asking for the response to be ‘slightly cryptic’.

“This was part of the ecology report and it was just at the bottom, it seemed to be like a secret email,” said Cllr Carpenter.

Mr Waite replied:

“I admit I get tired of too much being made of nothing. As officers of the council, we have various discussions between ourselves when we’re dealing with applications to make sure we’re aware of all the factors.

“I don’t know the particular circumstances
behind that email or the unfortunate wording of it but it is quite normal for officers to have discussions about schemes. I think you’d all hope we were having those discussions behind the scenes.”

A vote to defer the application came out as a tie between panel members and it fell to the chair, Cllr Joshua Reynolds (Lib Dem, Furze Platt) to cast the deciding vote.

Cllr Reynolds voted against deferring.

He said that, although he was ‘disappointed’ by the ‘straitjacket’ of the BLP, he thought this was the ‘best scheme’ the Borough could get for this site.

Instead, the application will now be approved with conditions. For more background on the scheme and conditions, visit tinyurl.com/mpm8ccvx