Our usual round-up of  local news includes: donations, recycling, horses, bins and an electric bus – plus the latest newsletter from Downlands ward member Carolyne Culver and a look at some of the issues with the Pen Meadow proposal in East Ilsley.  See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Compton area events include: a quiz night and live music. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities

• A ward member writes

Carolyne Culver is the ward member for Ridgeway. This comprises the parishes of West Ilsley, East Ilsley, Compton, Hampstead Norreys, Yattendon and Frilsham (so that’s quite a lot of meetings to attend). Here’s her latest (14 February 2024) report which covers her take both on ward matters and on some district-wide issues which have recently been on the WBC radar. If you need to contact her, you can do so on carolyne.culver1@westberks.gov.uk.

“It’s good to see the first signs of spring but I feel slightly uncomfortable about how early the daffodils have appeared bearing in mind Easter is still two months away. There are lapwing in the waterlogged fields between East Ilsley and Compton but unfortunately I’ve failed to spot any of the waxwing that have visited the district recently.

“The biggest issue at the Council now is the budget for 2024/25. The draft budget was discussed in detail at Scrutiny Commission in early February and will be debated and voted on at Full Council on 29 February. There was a good response to the public consultation and, as a result, WBC has decided not to go ahead with cutting funds for bins and gully clearance. I think the flooding concentrated people’s minds when it came to the latter proposal.

“There is still a longer-term debate to be had about the bins. There is some support among town and parish councils to take over the litter and dog bin arrangements because of dissatisfaction with the company running the WBC litter-bin contract. I made the point at Scrutiny Commission that, if this happens, it needs to be planned for so that town and parish councils have time to factor it into their annual precept setting.

“WBC also decided not to close one of its three care homes but it is still considering offloading them all to a private company. I have heard claims that the private sector can run them more efficiently: but the case against is that if the council has no care homes of our own in the future, we’ll have no choice but to pay whatever the private sector decides to charge. The budget for adult social care already far outstrips what the council spends on any other service. I often talk to councillors from other parts of the country and they’ve told me we should keep hold of our care homes because, if we don’t, we’ll pay the price in the long term. This is the challenge for councils across the country – funds are tight so there is a pressure to cut spending now, even if that creates challenges for the future.

“The Council has started work on documenting the damage caused by the recent flooding and learning lessons for the future. It’s still trying to identify at least 50 properties that were affected by internal flooding so that it can qualify for a government grant to distribute to those houses. The irony is that some people could really benefit from such funding, while others don’t declare that they were affected because they don’t want it to increase their insurance premiums. If there weren’t the 50-property threshold for the district set by the government, it wouldn’t be a problem. More information can be found here.

“If you own property next to a ditch in an area liable to flooding, it is worth reading the ‘Ditches Explained’ pdf on this page.  I admit it doesn’t sound terribly exciting but you might be surprised to learn that you might have some responsibility for the ditch maintenance. This doesn’t necessarily come up in house surveys and residents can be happily oblivious to this issue until there is a problem with flooding and they find out that they should have been looking after the ditch.

“You can report a range of issues (such as unemptied bins, potholes and abandoned vehicles on public highways) by visiting WBC’s report a problem page.

“For information about road works (such asutility companies digging up roads) please look at One Network which contains a map where you can search for details of what is happening in your area.”

• Pen Meadow

We frequently hear that there’s a severe shortage of affordable and social-rent homes in the district and that the private sector can’t provide these. When, therefore, an application emerges that seems to promise more such low-rent homes than the planning authority’s policy demands, and which claims that these will be sustainable, this surely should be grabbed with both hands?

Or perhaps not. Such a scheme – application reference 23/02681/FULMAJ for “Erection of 14 no. dwellings, public open space, a shared office space and associated infrastructure on Land West Of High Street” – has been proposed in East Ilsley and has so far attracted about forty objections. Why might this be?

A quick skim through the emails against the plan produce one over-riding objection: flooding. Any application which is coming up for determination (the deadline is 9 April, but this may not be met) so soon after the recent flood incidents can be guaranteed a bit of a rough ride. I won’t quote from any of these objections (you can see themselves on the above link) but will from ward member Carolyne Culver’s comment on the application.

She stresses that this is “not a letter of support or objection. I have heard from many residents and will likely hear from many more before a decision is made about this application. I will reserve judgement until I have heard all the arguments. However, I want to point out that the flood risk assessment document says the following:

• 2.4 Risk of groundwater flooding
• 2.4.1 We do not have any records of groundwater flooding within the vicinity of the site. We therefore consider the risk of ground water flooding to be low.

“The definition of “vicinity” is “the area near or surrounding a particular place”. I would recommend that the applicant asks for their money back from the consultant who wrote this report. This link includes maps of East Ilsley from the 2014 groundwater flooding event, indicating that there was internal property flooding on the eastern boundary of the proposed development, and ground water emerged from cracks in the surface of the road that runs along the northern boundary of the proposed development.”

She adds that “since the first weekend of January 2024 a property on the eastern boundary of the site has been pumping out their cellar. The proposed SuDS scheme will be directly behind and at a higher elevation than their house. The Crown and Horns on the High Street was shut for several days in early January because the cellar flooded and they lost several thousand pounds of stock.”

There’s also the question of the need for affordable housing. There seem to have been two local housing needs assessments produced. One, in 2018, resulted in 146 replies from 60 households, described as being a 32% overall response. This has been cited in one objection as showing that there were “only eight people” in the survey who wanted affordable housing “out of 1,500”. I find the results of the survey slightly hard to follow and can’t see where the eight people are mentioned. Nor am I sure about the 1,500 people as this is several times more than the village’s population and considerably more than the number of people (461) to whom the survey was sent.

The covering letter from the applicant’s consultants, dated 16 November 2023 (also available on the above WBC link) refers to another housing needs survey which was undertaken in March 2020 (which I haven’t been able to locate). This is claimed to have “identified a need for more homes for local people in the village” and it adds that public consultation events were held by the Parish Council in August 2021 and October 2021.

These two summaries are not as far apart as might at first appear. Eight (with or without the “only”) is the number of people who, it seems, expressed a desire for housing and the applicants’ agents have described this as “a need”. A recent statement from East Ilsley PC on its FB page confirms that this is exactly the number that the development is planning to provide. It’s hard to believe that this won’t increase, indeed may already have done so since 2020.

These points may, however, fall away in the face of the objections predicated on flooding (and some other issues including traffic). Given the number of these, the decision will go to planning committee if the officers are minded to accept it. There’s still time to make your comments, for or against.

• Have your say

Have your say on current consultations being run by West Berkshire Council: