Please note that this section is presented as an archive of past columns and is not updated. Some web links may no longer be active (usually indicated by a score-through), for instance when a consultation has closed. For reasons of space, the Events, Community Notices and News from Your Local Councils sections have been deleted from the archive posts.

To see the current Newbury Area Weekly News section, please click here.

Other archives

Please click here to see the other archived columns for this (and all the other) weekly news sections.

Thursday 19 December 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes community Christmas, eco friends, mummers, ninjas, rail services and winter activities – plus where we are with the complex story of which the Faraday Road football ground is but a part, and a look back at the main stories we’ve covered in 2024. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Cold Ash and Hermitage Mummers and Christmas Tree Festival. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Faraday Road

Over the last few years, I’ve written about this a lot, trying in the process to distinguish the issues which (1) were pre-existing and (2) emerged as a result of trying to solve the problem caused by the closure of the football ground in 2018. All have become twisted together, like strands of unbrushed hair. As a result, it’s hard to discuss one without needing at least to refer to the others. I can think of over a dozen people, regular correspondents on such matters and influential locally, who’d give a different summary of this – it’s that complex.

I recently made an attempt to apply conditioner and a comb to the story and to summarise where we are in December 2024. You can read this by clicking here.

• A look back at 2024

We’ve covered a lot of stories in this area over the last year. The archives of this column (scroll down for the last few weeks and, for earlier pages, follow the links) will provide what we said at the time. In this section, we’ll take a quick look at some of the main issues we’ve dealt with, some more than once.

• Faraday Road football ground. Goodness me, where does one start? The problem with this issue is that it has over the years got entangled with a number of other matters, including attempts made to resolve the problem. I have, after taking a deep breath and dunking my head in a bucket of cold water, written as brief and dispassionate a summary of the issue as I can which you can read in this separate post.

• Eagle Quarter. This is another matter (concerning the proposed re-development of the Kennet Centre) which, although clearly located in Newbury, has come to have area-wide significance. This has particularly happened in the last two months when two attempts were made to determine the application after years of discussion and public wrangling, first at the Western Area Planning Committee, then at the District Planning Committee. Both, embarrassingly and unnecessarily, were timed out and a third attempt will be made in January.

• Flooding and Sewage. This has been a problem throughout the year and is likely to remain so, particularly with a wet early 2025 being forecast. Hats off to the various pressure groups which have been so important in helping to spread information and lobby for improvements and, in particular, to the energetic and informed Paula Sanderson.

• The Newbury Show was back this year, following on from 2023’s show which was the first since 2019. Last month we caught up with two of the trustees of NADAS, which runs the event and who gave us some insights into the past, present and future of the organisation and the Show itself.

• Pedestrianisation. This is always a contentious matter. Each aspect of every change seems to produce opponents and supporters in roughly equal numbers. 2025 seems set to produce a trail period – not the word “trial” – to test the scheme in the centre of Newbury, after which there’ll be a further consultation.

• Phoenix Court. Despite numerous promptings and questions from Penny Post and others as to when, if ever, the wretched joint venture between Sovereign and WBC will see some homes built on the site (and also at Chestnut Walk in Hungerford), there has been absolutely no progress on this in 2024. None.

• Sandleford. This has been brewing for about 20 years, but matters have in the last year or so become somewhat clearer. The East (Bloor Homes) site should see work starting, initially on an access road and the school, in 2025. Discussions have been taking place between the developers, WBC and others agreeing the various reserved matters that will need to be applied for. The smaller West (Norgate) site is moving forward more slowly and may be sold to another developer. The big concern here is, and is likely to remain, the access point at Warren Road.

• Mayfield Point. This development, in the same part of town, is expected to get going in 2025 as well, and will provide homes, a hospice and a supermarket. The good news here is that, as it’s on Greenham Trust’s land, the profits will be staying in the district and redistributed within the community. None the less, if this and Sandleford start at about the same time, traffic in the south part of the town might at times become a little sticky.

• Watermill Bridge. This is yet another development in the same area whose progress we’ve followed closely. The two main points of interest here were (i) that although effectively part of Newbury, the site is actually in Basingstoke & Deane (B&D); and (ii) the Planning Inspector’s approval was the subject of a rather perplexing judicial review by B&D Council earlier this year, which failed. There are still concerns about flooding and environmental issues. Work is expected to start here in mid or late 2025.

• Educafé in Newbury meets every Wednesday during term-time in the Library and provides a wide range of support services, including help with loneliness and isolation, language barriers, maternal wellbeing, diversity, mental health, cost of living support and employability. An excellent institution, which Penny attends most weeks, and which we’ve been delighted to help promote and support. Congratulations also to Speen Community café, which performs much the same kind of work.

• Outside Newbury, there have also been several other stories we’ve covered. One of the most detailed, complex and divisive involves the issues surround the proposed travelling show person’s site in Enborne and the planning policy that underpins in. Also in Enborne, there’s been the slow progress with the community’s solar farm. Equally divisive in a different way has been the future of the White Hart in Hampstead Marshall, which now appearers to have been resolved through a change of use application.

• Other stories we’ve looked at include tree-planting initiatives (several run by or in partnership with Newbury Town Council), the problems of pharmacy provision in the town, policing issues, the retirement of Garry Poulson from the excellent Volunteer Centre West Berkshire, the café in Victoria Park which has had to be scaled back due to rising costs, and Newbury’s neighbourhood development plan.

We also have continued to provide the most comprehensive round-up of news from all the parish town councils in the area (including links to minutes) and provide in each weekly column a listing of community notices, local newsletters, consultations and events. All this will continue into 2025. Please email brian@pennypost.org.uk if there’s anything you’d like to contribute to any aspect of this section.

• Other news

• Sound Newbury Facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the Facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on WBC’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy-efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 12 December 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes festive events, ninjas, Christmas at home, digital technology and afternoon tea – plus further thoughts on Faraday Road, Newbury’s CEO (or Town Clerk), Hamstead Marshall’s hornet, a 10% uplift on tree planting, a silver lining for the Cow & Cask, WBC’s local plan, help needed by WB Foodbank and a reminder about a recent interview with two of the trustees of NADAS, which runs the Newbury Show. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Christmas Craft events and Festival of Light Parade. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Faraday thoughts

• Silver lining

You may have read about the break-ins of a couple of businesses in Inch’s Yard this week. The Cow & Cask micropub’s Christmas Hamper being raffled in aid of Volunteer Centre West Berkshire was taken but landlord Ian Batho has told us that “since the news of the break-in we have been inundated by replacement donations and are very grateful to know there is so much community spirit out there. The hamper draw will proceed as planned on Sunday 22 December.”

To pick up your raffle ticket, pop into the Cow & Cask which is open Tuesday to Saturday (4pm to 9pm Tuesday and Wednesday, 4pm to 10pm Thursday and Friday, noon to 10pm Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday). They sell mainly local cask ale also single serve wine, cider and soft drinks so there is definitely something for everyone.

• Three things for the Foodbank

West Berks Foodbank is currently in urgent need of three things: money, donations and volunteers. The first will be used to buy the food and other items that the donations may not cover; while the volunteers are required to help collect, stock and distribute what is received. Donations can be made by members of the public at a range of sites across the district. The charity is also keen to develop partnerships with local businesses. This page on the WBF website has more information on all of these aspects of the Foodbank’s work.

Why the need for this? The main one is that donations have failed to keep pace with the increase in demand. Clearly the cost-of-living crisis is with us yet. The cold weather, and the withdrawal of winter fuel payments for some, wouldn’t have helped as people are now forced to choose between heating and food. Volunteers are always required, at this season more than ever, as the logistics of dealing with all the generous donations is time-consuming.

It’s a shame that such organisations are needed at all: but, as they are, we are at least lucky that we have several, including WBF, in the district that are doing such great jobs. In any of the ways suggested above, any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

• Do you agree with the plan?

West Berkshire Council’s public consultation on the main modifications to the district’s Local Plan 2022- 2039 is now live. “The Local Plan sets out planned development for West Berkshire,” a statement from the Council explains, “and guides decisions on future development proposals in line with the needs of the district.

“The Public Examination stage began earlier this year with a number of public hearings, the last of which took place on 3 October 2024. During this process, the Planning Inspector required additional sites to be identified to address a shortfall in the number of houses to be delivered within the next five years.”

WBC has made the point that it had little or no choice on this. “We were ready to vote to withdraw the plan [which it had inherited from the previous administration],”Executive Member for Planning Denise Gaines said, “but we were directed to proceed to examination by the government. The sites identified in the main modifications are extremely contentious with many residents in West Berkshire, but we are in the invidious position of having to proceed to consultation.”

Consequently the Council has put forward amendments and additions to the plan which will particularly affect Thatcham, Cold Ash, Calcot, Tilehurst and Pangbourne and the surrounding parishes.

The consultation runs until Friday 31 January 2025. Residents are encouraged to have their say by clicking here.

For more on this, including sources of help and advice and help in responding to the consultation, see the 12 December 2024 This Week with Brian column.

• A look back at NADAS

A reminder of an interview we recently conducted with Steve Ackrill and Nick Wallis from NADAS, which organises the Newbury Show. This looks back over an eventful period for the long-established organisation which three years ago was sliding into debt and contemplating some radical solutions which did not meet with the approval of all the members. Click here to read it.

• Other news

• Sound Newbury Facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the Facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on WBC’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy-efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 5 December 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes community Christmas, carols, a nature corridor, a holiday fest and pollarding – plus the latest news from Newbury’s Faraday Road ground, uncertainties about an important policy relating to Enborne in WBC’s latest local plan consultation, Eagle Quarter’s forthcoming third attempt to come in to land, an interview with Newbury Town Council’s CEO, edible forest-planting, Wash Common’s anniversary and vocational courses available through Newbury College. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Newbury Living Advent Calendar & Christmas carols & concerts. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Football news

West Berkshire Council (WBC) has announced that it has commissioned community, activity and leisure strategy specialists Stuart Todd Associates (STA) to create its new Playing Pitch Strategy (PPS) and, as a separate item, the Masterplan for Henwick Worthy Sports Ground. “The PPS is a key part of the Council’s Sport and Leisure commitment to deliver excellent sport and leisure facilities and opportunities across the district,” the statement asserts.

The PPS is expected to be completed in mid-2025. It needed to be re-done because it was felt that too much time had elapsed and it needed more than a refresh. However, I think we can be fairly certain that one of its main conclusions will be that there’s a shortage of football provision in Newbury, with Faraday Road and Henwick being the two top candidates for improved facilities to remedy this.

Across the district, there’s currently a shortage of between eight and 11 pitches. This is unlikely to have improved since the last PPS was done: rather the reverse, if anything.

We mentioned before that a viability report has been commissioned into whether a 3G pitch can be installed at Faraday Road, and I understand that the results of this should be known in the next week or so. Assuming the report says it can be installed, the next question is for WBC to decide if this is what it wants. If it does, the funds need to be raised from grant donors.

It’s to be hoped that the old PPS can be used as evidence of need and these applications can be made as soon as possible. Otherwise, another six months will have been lost in a project which has already eaten up far too much time.

Any grant donor will also need cast-iron assurances that the pitch will be used for community football, probably for at least 20 years. This would therefore kill off any proposals that the ground be re-developed in the foreseeable future, and in so doing bring an end to a very sorry and divisive local saga.

More good news for Faraday Road was announced on 5 December with the ground receiving official accreditation as a Step 7 facility. The minor issue about the size of the changing rooms has also been resolved. Step 7 is the level that Newbury FC currently plays at, so any promotion would require further improvements. A spokesperson for the Newbury Community Football Group told Penny Post on 5 December that the re-development was always going to be an incremental project.

In June 2018, when it was closed, the ground was Step 5: so all the cost and disputes of the last six years has only resulted so far in a less good facility. Another way of looking at it is that, in May 2023, the ground was at Step 0, if such a grading exists. So at least it’s now travelling in the right direction again, albeit more slowly than some would like.

• Some confusion about RSA25 in Enborne

At its meeting on 28 November, WBC’s Full Council voted to move the local plan forward to its next stage, a public consultation into the main modifications to the local plan which have been requested, or demanded, by the Planning Inspector, as well as other supplementary documents. You can see the agenda and the documents by clicking here. The consultation will go live on 6 December and will run for eight weeks.

These are not easy documents for the layperson to understand. Aside from being technical and not exactly elegantly written, they also require quite a lot of cross-referencing and navigation through the various deletions. None the less, they’re important. Can you get any help in deciphering them?

If anyone has queries about the consultation, they should contact the Planning Policy Team at planningpolicy@westberks.gov.uk or 01635 519 111. I can also suggest that the parish and town councils which have been engaged in the discussions about these (such as Enborne) will have acquired a considerable amount of expertise. If you contact the respective bodies, the councillors will do their best to explain issues of local importance and to provide assistance on how any comments should be phrased.

Your local ward members (district councillors) should also be able to offer help and advice. You can see a full list of these here. Remember that some wards are represented by more than one member.

Enborne’s interest in the matter chiefly turns on whether or not the Inspector feels that the policy RSA25 (which currently allocates 24 travelling showperson’s plots in the parish) is sound. I’m confused by the fact that it seems WBC only asked for the inspectors’ recommendations regarding “soundness and legality” on 5 December: this  is something the inspector said WBC would have to request in writing. For whatever reason this hadn’t happened in time for it to be included in the above documents for approval by the Council. That not having happened, I therefore don’t know if these can now be included.

I’m further confused (it’s easily done) by the fact that the two main references to RSA25 in the Main Modifications (on p120 and p123) seem to be in stark contrast to each other.

I don’t know if the intention is to make RSA25 seem completely opaque but that’s certainly the result. My advice to people in Enborne is to look at this part particularly carefully when the final documents are published and, as suggested above, ask for help or advice if you need it. Many residents won’t need me to tell them that this matter could have significant local consequences.

• The eagle’s third attempt at a landing

As mentioned previously, the last meeting of WBC’s District Planning Committee ended up by needlessly running out of time, as the Western Area meeting did before it. A second replay – if this were the FA Cup it would have gone to penalties by now – will take at another District Planning Committee meeting is on Wednesday 8 January, kick-off time to be decided. The agenda and the documents will appear here in due course.

The developers would have been within their rights to appeal on the grounds of non-determination. However, rightly in my view, they have decided not to. The promise of an early determination date would have helped. Not only does an appeal take a long time, but it also introduces an additional adversarial aspect to the situation. Assuming permission is granted, the two sides will need to work closely together for several years. An expensive court case would not be the ideal start to this

A statement received from WBC in answer to questions I posed refuted my suggestion that none of the members who sat on the last District meeting could sit on this one as, by having voted, they were clearly pre-determined. It remains to be seen if there will be new members or not. The problem may be that there may not be enough councillors who did not attend the last one, who have planning training and who are available.

By “available”, that must also include being available for a possible session of extra time the following evening. Inexplicably, this precaution was not taken last time out. The question is a very simple one: can you also make a possible over-run meeting on 9 December? If you can’t make both, please nominate a substitute who can. I’ll be interested to know if this has been asked for this time.

If the matter has to go to a fourth meeting – I know it seems incredible but on past form this can’t be ruled out – the list of possible committee members could be even shorter. On 5 December, the PM said that he intended to forbid councillors from sitting on planning meetings which were deciding applications in their ward. Maybe this will have to go to penalties after all…

• Wash Common’s birthday

Wash Common Library is proud to celebrate its sixth anniversary this Satuday 7 December. This is an impressive acheivement given West Berkshire Council’s closure of the library in March 2017 as part of its review of Library Services. A book exchange was run out of the Wash Common Community centre for about a year until WBC agreed to lease the library building through Newbury Town Council to the Library.

Greenham Trust was extremely helpful in supporting the cause with re-opening project on the Good Exchange raising over £15,000 with donations from individuals, as well as grants from Newbury Town Council, Englefield Trust, Greenham Trust and the Vodafone foundation.

The Friends of WCL re-opened the library on 1 December 2018 as an independent community library. West Berkshire Library Service was also very helpful and allowed them to keep the shelving and the book stock, equivalent to what was in the library when it closed.

• Newbury’s CEO

Last year, Newbury Town Council appointed a new CEO, Toby Miles-Mallowan, to replace Hugh Peacocke. Some might wonder what the CEO of a town council does and what this particular one hopes to achieve in the role.

Well, wonder no more: for we recently caught up with Toby between planning meetings, steering groups and trips to the Corn Exchange to ask him about these very things, as well as the all-important matters of his choices of music, book, film and luxury item were he to find himself cast away on a desert island. You can read the interview here.

• Edible forest planting at Robert Sandilands School

Speen Community Café isn’t just a weekly get-together at The Starting Gate Pub. Organiser Kerry Bird also gets grant funding for projects in the wider Speen area. Her latest greening project includes an edible Food Forest and wildflife hedge at Robert Sandilands Primary School, opposite the pub. Last Tuesday 26 November’s planting day saw volunteers from Balfour Beatty help plant fruit trees, currant and gooseberry bushes and herbs and salad under the direction of landscape designer Rachel Hammond from edge Landscaping in Speen.

All the pupils got involved, and Headteacher Libby Bucknell says: “The children have been so excited and keen to get busy helping plant and build hedgehog houses and bug hotels. It’s especially nice for the younger ones, who will see the plants grow during the time they are here at school.”

• Vocational courses

Looking for personal enrichment or to develop your career? Study Online vocational part-time Level 2 courses are free for over-19 year-olds and can be started at any time, with usually six months to complete the coursework. They include several Childcare & Education, Health, Social & Public Services courses well as a range of courses in Business, Accountancy and Management

These are provided by Newbury College and funded by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. They’re are available free to UK nationals aged 19 and over, who agree to take their qualification as part of a Study Online Programme. You must have lived in the UK for the past three years and live in an eligible area of England (this includes West Berkshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire), must not be undertaking another funded course or apprenticeship and be able to meet the course’s entry requirements.

Students who fail to complete their programme within the agreed timeframe may have to pay fees. There may be an additional charge for work-based assessment visits and other costs. You will be advised of any additional charges before enrolment. Only one Study Online course may be taken at a time. However, you are encouraged to progress to the next level or a different subject of study after finishing your programme. See here for more details.

• Other news

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now Facebook group. Also see WBC’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• Sound Newbury Facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the Facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on WBC’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy-efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 28 November 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes hedges, recycling IT, paying for the policing, an advent calendar and a peace vigil – plus a further look at the most recent attempt to determine the Eagle Quarter application, football scrutiny, flooding update, a chat with two of the people behind the Newbury Show, news from the local Quakers and a plastic-free initiative. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Newbury Living Advent Calendar & Candlelit Christmas Fair. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• For want of a nail: the Eagle Quarter non-decision

In the 28 November This Week with Brian, I take a close look at the circumstances that led to the recent planning committee meeting yet again running out of time before it could determine the application for the Eagle Quarter proposal in Newbury, what could have been done to prevent this embarrassing problem and why all this is important.

At the time of writing, it’s still unclear how or by whom the matter will be decided. If a third meeting is required, then, unless something changes about how they’re organised, there’s no reason to suppose that the same thing won’t happen again.

• Football scrutiny

There are always things that need looking into with any council’s work. Here in West Berkshire, the long-running saga of the Faraday Road football ground in Newbury and its proposed replacement (or non-replacement, or partial replacement, depending on what documents you read) at Monks Lane provide an almost inexhaustible supply of material.

The Scrutiny Commission this month looked at the recent spending on Faraday Road to return it to a condition where football can be played. This was in response to a question from Paul Morgan, a long-time member of the Newbury Community Football Group and an opponent of the closure of the ground in 2018. You can see this part of the meeting by clicking here (from about 15′).

The costs of these were about £230,000 as phase one (to February) and £395,000 (to November), as reported by WBC’s Leader Jeff Brooks at the Executive meeting on 7 November. Paul Morgan claimed that the true costs were closer to £430,000. Time will tell.

Some of his points referred to the project-management of the work since May 2023, and he suggested that the project was unambitious and could have been better planned and executed. Much of what followed were justifications from the officer and portfolio-holder as to why certain courses of action had been chosen or suppliers selected.

This was brought right up-to-date with a discussion about the confusion over the size of the changing rooms. These turned on a disagreement between WBC and the League as whether these were new or a replacement, different sizes being required in each case.

Those who have followed this story will know that this is not the first time the word “replacement” has featured in the saga. The entire Monks Lane sports hub proposal has been described variously as a “replacement” and “not a replacement” for the ground at Faraday Road. This is not just a semantic quibble, but one that has legal, procedural and financial implications.

Indeed, one can’t look at Faraday Road for very long without the proposed Monks Lane sports hub shouldering its way into the discussion – which was itself entirely a product of the closure of the football ground. The project-management of the sports hub is the subject of a task and finish group (a sub-committee of the Scrutiny Commission), which will report in the early spring. Another one will then start work, looking at project-management in other areas of WBC’s work. The phrase keeps on cropping up, doesn’t it?

Project-management competence is vital for any organisation that has capital projects which may take years to accomplish. It has been suggested that, with these football-related schemes, this could have been better. That is what the Scrutiny Commission is looking at, though it will be some months before we have the answer.

If the projects have been indifferently managed over the last six years, this is none the less an improvement on how the whole business started. The closure of the Faraday Road ground in June 2018 was a horrible blunder, performed to propitiate a development partner who was subsequently forced to pull out, and in pursuit of a long-term goal for the wider London Road Industrial Estate area which was, it’s now clear, built on very shaky foundations.

Everything that has happened since has been either a reaction to the increasing problems that this decision caused or, since May 2023, the result of a political promise to turn the clock back to 2018. This has proved more complicated than expected. All in all, this was a project that started badly and has never managed to get off the back foot thereafter.

As the work at Faraday Road is still continuing, the costs will continue to rise. So too will further questions about how this work is done, which will doubtless lead to further questions about the past. To add to the complexity, the planning permission for the sports hub at Monks Lane remains in place, as does the budget line to pay for it: does this mean that this may be built after all in some form?

This might need to wait until the new playing-pitch strategy is done. However this, like everything else with this project, has got delayed. And so it goes on…

• Other news

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now Facebook group. Also see WBC’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• Sound Newbury Facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the Facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on WBC’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy-efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Proposed Fees for Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Vehicles and Private Hire Operator’s Licences 2025/26 – deadline 19 December 2024.

Budget Proposals 2025/26 – all deadlines 23 December 2024:

• Remove Downland Sports Centre from the Leisure Management Contract
• Reduce the number of winter gritting routes
• Discontinue the Mobile Library Service
• Turn off streetlights in residential roads between midnight and 5am
• Create a voluntary charitable contribution (via Council Tax payments) scheme
• Increase some Adult Social Care (ASC) fees and charges above the rate of inflation
• Cease providing the Adult Respite (ARC) in the Community Service
• Explore options to deliver Adult Social Care (ASC) Resource Centre services through an alternative provider or in a different way
• Remove a proportion of the litter bins and dog waste bins from the Grounds Maintenance Contract

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 21 November 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes a vigil, tea, awards, art, roadworks and gigs – plus West Berkshire Council has its say on the inconclusive meeting to discuss the Eagle Quarter application and cold-weather support for rough sleepers. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Christmas Fair at West Berks Hospital & Local Author Book Fair. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Faraday Road

There’s been a bit of a furore on local social media on 21 November about the size of the changing rooms at the old/new Faraday Road football ground which, after a six-plus-year hiatus, started hosing adult matches again this month.

I referred to this matter last week (see below: A size too small). This included the following:

“There was one minor wrinkle, however, as it appeared that the changing rooms were a bit too small (10.2 sq m instead of the necessary 12 sq m). This’ is a matter that will have to be addressed before next week’s cup game against Woodcote. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, for earlier this year it was discovered that the referees’ changing areas were also slightly undersized.

“I wonder if the officers involved at WBC thinks footballers and refs are smaller than they actually are; or perhaps they were measuring when standing too far away and got confused by the perspective.

“The referees’ area has already been sorted and I understand that the players’ one can be fairly simply solved by removing a dividing wall. Hopefully the ball for the Woodcote match will be full-sized, not one from a Subutteo table.”

The situation has changed recently in that the League now claims that, because it regards this a permanent facility, that the size actually needs to be 18 sq m. The changing rooms look temporary to me, but what do I know? I understand that this is something that the League, Newbury FC and West Berkshire Council are seeking to resolve. The hope is to get this sorted in time for the next scheduled home match on 30 November: or, according to a statement from WBC on 22 November, by 7 December.

The statement adds that “the Newbury Community Football Group (NCFG) and Newbury FC remain delighted with the new facilities and the ground.”

This is unfortunate, certainly. but seems reparable. I don’t know who was responsible. However, the whole history of the ground since June 2018 has been one of almost unmitigated disaster. A premature closure, a failed court case, impractical visions, an arson attack, mysterious disappearances, a surreal replacement/non-replacement argument, a casual disposal of the stand, numerous missed opportunities, delays, wasted money, procedural wrangles, lapsed planning applications, fractured relationships – I could go on.

Credit to the new administration for getting this restored but even this took vastly longer than anticipated and has not been without its frustrations. However, to be where we are now – ie back too a rather less good version of June 2018 – would have seemed inconceivable even two years ago. All those involved with this, hats off: you know who you are.

With all this history, I’m inclined to treat this latest glitch with gallows humour, as I did last week. On a scale of the largest, say, thirty cock-us about this facility arranged in descending order of importance, I’d put this at about twenty-nine. Of course, others may disagree…

• Lightning strikes again: West Berkshire Council’s response

Last week I wrote about the recent eventful but ultimately inconclusive meeting of WBC’s District Planning Committee (DPC). This failed to make a decision on the Eagle Quarter application, as the Western Area Planning Committee had also failed to do last month, so placing WBC in a potentially awkward, and expensive, position.

I wrote to the Council to ask whether it had considered increasing the sitting time or have it run over to a second day, why the livestream had cut out before the meeting ended, what guidance had been given to the Chair as to how the timing should work to ensure a conclusion before the deadline of 10.30pm, and whether the officers at the meeting had a sufficient understanding of how WBC’s constitution worked.

Very promptly, I received a response via the Communications department which largely addressed these points.

“The meeting started earlier than normal to provide additional time for a decision to be reached,” I was told. “The application was debated, but no proposal received a passing vote before 10.30pm. The meeting could have been adjourned until the next day, however this would only be possible if councillors were available. It was not possible, in the time available on the night, to make this decision.”

I’ve asked if any request had been made in advance that members keep the following evening free (and nominate a substitute if they couldn’t make both). Clearly, asking them on the night was leaving it far too late. This would have solved everything.

It was accepted that the livestream should not have stopped before the meeting did. “In future, it will be for the Chair to confirm the meeting has ended and the livestream be stopped rather than those supporting the meeting.” Fair enough.

Regarding the expertise, “The Council does not agree that there was no-one available with sufficient knowledge of the constitution. There were a number of options being mooted within the last 10 minutes which needed to be considered and a view taken that was in accordance with the Council’s constitution and case law.” I can only say that this wasn’t how it looked; also that matters should never have been allowed to get to such a nail-biting conclusion.

“Imposing specific milestones to reach at certain times throughout the committee is not possible given the complexities of the information that needed to be digested. Doing so could have led to an unsound decision on the basis that members did not have sufficient information and/or debate was restricted.”

I accept the point. However, I wasn’t suggesting that anything be imposed, merely that guidance could have been offered as to by when certain stages should have been reached and what methods or forms of words were appropriate to help accomplish this.

I also suggested that, if the DPC needs to meet again, the members from last week couldn’t take part as, having voted on the matter, they were obviously pre-determined. However, WBC asserts that “we consider that it will be possible for members to sit on a further committee and consider the matter afresh”. I only hope that the matter isn’t refused and pre-determination used as a grounds for appeal.

The impasse might, I suggested, lead to the developer seeking an appeal now on the grounds of non-determination. The Council wasn’t interested in speculating on this one: “It is up to the developer how they wish to proceed and the Council cannot comment on the decisions they may take,” the statement said.

Finally, I asked what was likely to happen next. “We are continuing to look at how best to move this application forward,” the statement said. So I would imagine. Assuming the lines of communication between the two parties are still open, as I understand they are, I would imagine that there are some serious conversations taking place with, once again, a ticking clock in the background. What each one decides will at least be partly informed by the actions of the other.

The big nightmare for WBC will be an appeal with costs which it loses. I don’t think either party wants to go down the legal route if it can be avoided. However, if WBC can’t decide the matter, there wouldn’t appear to be too many other options.

• Cold weather support for rough sleepers

• Other news

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now Facebook group. Also see WBC’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• Sound Newbury Facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the Facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on WBC’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Plans are underway to rejuvenate Newbury town centre, starting with the revitalisation of the Peace Garden at the Wharf. The Wharf is a major focus of WBC’s Newbury Town Centre Masterplan, which aims to enhance leisure, community, and cultural experiences, economic growth, and community activities. This project is backed by grants of £375,000 from the Thames Valley Local Enterprise Partnership and £420,000 from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Click here to learn more.

• WBC has announced the continuation of the winter Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme. This initiative is designed to support free school meal eligible children and families during the school holidays, with nutritious meals and enriching activities for children aged 5 to 16 years old. The activities promote physical health, creativity, education and social skills, ranging from sports to arts and other opportunities that cater to different interests. Eligible families can now book for Christmas 2024, so to learn more click here.

• Have your say

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

Proposed Fees for Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Vehicles and Private Hire Operator’s Licences 2025/26 – deadline 19 December 2024.

Budget Proposals 2025/26 – all deadlines 23 December 2024:

• Remove Downland Sports Centre from the Leisure Management Contract
• Reduce the number of winter gritting routes
• Discontinue the Mobile Library Service
• Turn off streetlights in residential roads between midnight and 5am
• Create a voluntary charitable contribution (via Council Tax payments) scheme
• Increase some Adult Social Care (ASC) fees and charges above the rate of inflation
• Cease providing the Adult Respite (ARC) in the Community Service
• Explore options to deliver Adult Social Care (ASC) Resource Centre services through an alternative provider or in a different way
• Remove a proportion of the litter bins and dog waste bins from the Grounds Maintenance Contract

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 14 November 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes switch-on time, charity awards, IT recycling, a peace garden, planting, a bear, a van and a vigil – plus lightning strikes twice with the Eagle Quarter planning decision, new trees at Stroud green, upsizing required at Faraday Road, flooding on the menu and the next community forum and budget consultations. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Newbury Christmas Lights Switch-On & Christmas Fair. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Lightning strikes again

On 3 October, West Berkshire Council’s Western Area Planning Committee (WAPC) met, discussed and failed to agree on a decision regarding probably the most important proposed change to the centre of Newbury for many decades, the redevelopment of the Kennet Centre (to be known as Eagle Quarter).

The main reason for this was because it ran out of time. Such events must finish by 10.30pm. The obvious thing, given that this was no ordinary application, was to have started earlier. It seemed on that occasion that the room had been double-booked. As a result, the whole thing was passed up to the District Planning Committee, which met on 13 November for the replay.

As I said about this in This Week with Brian on 10 October, “This will comprise 11 members rather than nine, so increasing the likely deliberation time. Five of them, not being on WAPC, will be much less familiar with the matter. All the presentations will presumably need to be re-made. Further questions will doubtless be asked, but old ones posed before probably gone over again. None of this leads to any hope that matters will pan out any better.”

They didn’t. Despite this prediction (and other warning bells which must surely have been ringing internally at WBC), the 13 November meeting of the District Planning Committee ended in confusion and disarray as the witching hour approached, still without a decision. Right at the end, and almost in desperation as the clock ticked relentlessly on, two motions were put, one to approve the application and one to refuse it. Neither passed, which seemed odd. (It could be argued that by voting not to oppose the application the committee had gone with the officers’ recommendation to approve it.)

I suspect many of the members’ heads were a bit addled by then. Half of them had been on Western Area last month so dejà vu was probably kicking in as well.

I don’t know why it was thought that a different result might follow if exactly the same timetable was used for a re-run of the same discussion. If the system can’t provide for a decent amount of time (perhaps split over two consecutive days) to be allocated for something so important then there’s something very badly wrong with it. It’s a bit like saying that the FA Cup Final will this year be played at Hungerford’s Bulpit Lane ground – after all, it’s just another football match.

Last month, there was an economics officer there who didn’t seem to have been properly briefed. This time, there didn’t seem to be anyone who understood WBC’s constitution; given what happened last time, this was always likely to rear its head.

It got worse. Promptly at 10.30pm, when the Chair and the officers were still anxiously discussing what was going to happen next, the live-stream cut off. Clearly, the person setting the camera timing had a different view of what “10.30 finish” meant than did the people running the meeting. For a public committee which was still clearly in progress, this was completely unacceptable.

It was also illogical. The meeting clearly had not finished, and so was in breach of the 10.30pm limit that seems to exist. On the other hand, the public record of it did finish. This created a kind of Schrödinger’s cat of a meeting; something that was alive and dead at the same time. It also showed a lack of co-ordinated pre-planning for an eventuality that was likely to occur, and increasingly so as the meeting progressed. I’ll be taking this matter further.

As a result, we didn’t get to hear the denouement of this farcical event. We’re little clearer as to what might happen next. One option is that the District Planning Committee will re-convene and go over the matter yet again, probably from the very beginning. If so, I can’t see how any of the people from last night can sit on it as, by having voted, they’re obviously pre-determined.

Picking new members will probably mean some will know nothing about the application. Some may not know much about planning, which might disqualify them. There will also be the problem of satisfying the need for a balance between eastern and western members, and that of having the membership proportional to the political composition.

Coming up with enough suitable members will be a challenge in itself. In addition, if the structure of the meeting isn’t changed, particularly as regard its timing, there’s no reason to expect a different result third time round.

“We are very disappointed,” a spokesperson for the developers, Lochailort, said. “Despite all the efforts made by officers and additional information provided following the western committee in October, the district committee has failed to decide this application. We are reflecting on the content of the meeting and are considering our options at present.”

Lochailort might launch an appeal on the grounds of non-determination. Not one but two planning committees trying and failing to decide something is as good a practical example of non-determination as one’s likely to find.

I imagine that the Council will at some point be issuing a statement to confirm what its next steps will be. The possibility of an appeal, with all its associated costs if this is lost, will be much in their thoughts. Exactly what is procedurally agreed and how soon it will happen will have a bearing on the likely cost exposure.

All in all, the Council has a bit of a problem on its hands. Much seems to depend on whether the developers can be persuaded, once again, to  stay their hands with an appeal, which seems in some ways a rational commercial reaction to these two less-than-smooth meetings.

I hope they can be convinced to give the system one more chance. An appeal would be divisive, possibly seriously so. Assuming the matter is eventually approved, the two parties will need to work together for some years to come on getting the thing done. Perhaps the first thing that needs to be built, by both parties, is a bridge over the troubled waters that currently divide them.

Matters might, however, be taken out of WBC’s hands altogether. Angela Rayner has said that she’s serious about trying to get 300,000 homes a year built and has already upped the housing quotas for planning authorities.

More recently, she’s decided to get even more proactive. Swayle Borough Council in Kent had been set to decide on an 8,400-home development on 7 November (with officers recommending refusal). Hours before the committee could meet, however, the Secretary of State decided to call the matter in, meaning it will eventually be decided in Whitehall. The Council has said that it will “robustly explain” its reasons for believing the proposal should be refused.

Angela Rayner is clearly using this as a way of showing her teeth to the councils. Much as I support local democracy and decision-making, I must sadly admit that if she’s looking for a further example of the planning system not producing the results she wants, or a quick result – or, indeed, any result – she would find one in what happened in West Berkshire on Wednesday.

It’s not necessary for planning authorities to agree with her. However, they do need to recognise that they can’t ignore her. They should also spend some time getting their decision-making processes fit for the purposes to which they’re being put. In this case, as we’ve now seen twice, WBC’s clearly aren’t.

• New trees

Work has begun to remove the Italian Poplars at Stroud Green in Newbury to make way for new ones.

A statement from West Berkshire Council explains that “these iconic trees must be felled after reaching their lifespan as some have started to fall down in the last couple of years. We inspected them earlier this year and found that most of the trees had some level of decline and hollowing, making them unsafe for residents as they were susceptible of falling. But don’t worry – we’ll be replacing the much-loved poplars like for like and aim to start planting the new poplars in autumn/winter 2025/26.”

You can find details on the consultation on replacement tree here.

• A size too small

As we mentioned last week, Newbury FC has finally been able to play its first fixture at its ancestral home since the ground was closed in 2018. Unfortunately the match against Abingdon Town resulted in a 3-0 defeat. The real victory, however, was off the pitch, this being the culmination of a six-year struggle to reverse the perverse and pointless decision to close the ground. About 500 people were there to witness the return, among the the Mayor of Newbury.

There was one minor wrinkle, however, as it appeared that the changing rooms were a bit too small (10.2 sq m instead of the necessary 12 sq m). This’ is a matter that will have to be addressed before next week’s cup game against Woodcote. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, for earlier this year it was discovered that the referees’ changing areas were also slightly undersized.

I wonder if the officers involved at WBC thinks footballers and refs are smaller than they actually are; or perhaps they were measuring when standing too far away and got confused by the perspective.

The referees’ area has already been sorted and I understand that the players’ one can be fairly simply solved by removing a dividing wall. Hopefully the ball for the Woodcote match will be full-sized, not one from a Subutteo table.

One rather more important matter which has yet to be resolved concerns the viability report for whether a 3G pitch can be put in at the ground. This is now overdue and I understand is expected any day now. If this can be done – and if WBC wants to do it (subject to confirmation from the to-be-updated playing pitch strategy, though we all know what that’s going to say about the need for football provision in Newbury) – it would be a real game-changer.

Any grants – it’s unlikely WBC would fund this entirely itself – would demand a guarantee of football at the site for at least 20 years. This would kill off any plans to redevelop the site for other purposes. It would also help to close a particularly divisive chapter in local life, hopefully for good.

• Cost of living and flood prevention on the menu of the next Community Forum

• Other news

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now Facebook group. Also see WBC’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the Facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on WBC’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Draft Carers Strategy 2024 – 27 – deadline 17 November 2024.

Budget Proposals 2025/26 – all deadlines 23 December 2024:

• Remove Downland Sports Centre from the Leisure Management Contract
• Reduce the number of winter gritting routes
• Discontinue the Mobile Library Service
• Turn off streetlights in residential roads between midnight and 5am
• Create a voluntary charitable contribution (via Council Tax payments) scheme
• Increase some Adult Social Care (ASC) fees and charges above the rate of inflation
• Cease providing the Adult Respite (ARC) in the Community Service
• Explore options to deliver Adult Social Care (ASC) Resource Centre services through an alternative provider or in a different way
• Remove a proportion of the litter bins and dog waste bins from the Grounds Maintenance Contract

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 7 November 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes remembrance, lights, art, trees, carers, a sleep-out and the cost of living – plus free bus travel, two local care homes may be put out to tender, Faraday Road finally hosts senior football again, and decision day looms (again) for the Eagle Quarter. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Cemetery Remembrance Event & Remembrance Parade. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Newbury’s football

One of the major pledges in the Lib Dem’s manifesto for the 2023 election was returning football to Faraday Road after the unjustified closure of the ground in 2018. This return sort of happened this time last year with some junior football. The adults have had to wait rather longer for the dilapidated ground to get the accreditation as a Step 7 facility.

This has finally been accomplished with the first fixture since the closure taking place this Saturday, 9 November. This has all been confirmed quite recently as a result of which West Berkshire Council (WBC) issued a hurried press release.

Suitable for Step 7 games it might be, but the ground is still a long way short of what it used to be. This means that WBC either needs to return this to the state it was before or find a replacement (which Monks Lane is not, despite sometimes having been presented as such) if the Council is not to remain in breach of Sport England’s regulations.

If the plans proposed by the Newbury Community Football Group three years ago had been followed, this is what would have happened already. These provided for a 3G pitch which would go some way to addressing the chronic shortage of football-pitch provision in the district, and Newbury in particular. All of this could have been well in hand now if it had been pushed forward straight after the election. For various reasons, not all of which are clear to me, it wasn’t.

A number of things need to happen before work starts. These include a justification for the need in an updated Playing Pitch Strategy (PPS), a feasibility study into the 3G pitch, an application for funding and planning permission.

Due to delays, the PPS is now so out of date that, rather than being refreshed ,it needs to be re-done, which will take a year; the planning permission is about to lapse and will need to start again; and the feasibility study was only commissioned a few months ago and has not yet reported back. In the absence of any of these, no funding has been applied for: this will take at least a year as well. If, therefore, all these things happen sequentially, it’s highly unlikely that work will even have started, still less be finished, before the next council elections in 2027.

For opponents of the redevelopment of the ground, however, this should be worth waiting for. If a 3G pitch is installed, any donor will demand cast-iron assurances that the pitch will be used for at least 20 years.

This will, for the foreseeable future, end any discussion about building over the pitch. I do hope that these delays will not cascade into thwarting one of the pledges people voted for last year. To make sure that this won’t happen, the administration needs to get a bit of pace into the project over the next few months.

• Cutting the cloth

WBC has announced it will launch a public consultation to give residents the opportunity to have their say on how to balance its 2025/26 budget. This is set to begin on Monday 11 November and is subject to being approved by the Executive when it meets on Thursday 7 November.

The statement adds: “Around £3.3m savings have been found that don’t require consultation, and proposals which could deliver a financial benefit up to £1.2m which do.” Contrary to what you might have read elsewhere, the Executive meeting won’t deciding anything about the proposed £1.2m-worth of savings, but will merely be authorising the consultation to start.

One of the matters which requires public views concerns the mobile library. It’s proposed that this be discontinued and replaced “with a more effective library service option for residents in rural areas such as delivery by the ‘at home’ service.” There has been some dismay at the news but the service was only dealing with about 260 book loans a year.

Any new service might even result in more people receiving books more regularly than with the current system, which sees the mobile library visiting villages on a six-week cycle and in some cases having to park where residents of a village with mobility issues cannot easily reach it.

One of the matters which the Council can proceed with without consultation is the possible privatisation of its remaining care homes. There are three of these: two, Birchwood and Willows Edge in Newbury, are being considered for outsourcing; the third, Notrees in Kintbury, will be looked at separately as it has a particularly complex ownership arrangement. If the new arrangements will save money without compromising the quality of care then they make sense. Certainly, WBC is now one of only a few councils which continues to run its own care homes.

• The eagle lands again

On Wednesday 13 November, the District Planning Committee will have one of its rare meetings to decide the application for the Eagle Quarter in Newbury. As I reported on 10 October, the Western Area Planning Committee meeting on 3 October, which started considering it, ran out of time. Given the scale and importance of the application, this surely could have been predicted and other arrangements made.

In any event, it’s been referred up to the District so the whole matter will need to be gone into again then. I understand that some better photos have been provided (clearly someone read my comments) which should provide a bit more certainty about the scale and the views of the proposed development from elsewhere in the town.

The last time the application was refused, the developers appealed, but were persuaded to withdraw this and instead engage in discussions with the officers, which took about a year. If it’s refused again I can be fairly certain that it will be appealed, and I doubt WBC will be able to talk them out of it a second time. This isn’t a speculative green-field site where, if refused, the applicants might be tempted to give up. Lochailort isn’t going anywhere and, one way or another, the Kennet Centre will be redeveloped.

“We hope that the Committee will follow the Officer’s recommendation for approval,” Lochailort’s Managing Director Hugo Haig told Penny Post on 6 November. “All parties have worked hard to create the scheme that has been presented to the members of the committee. It will be a great scheme and one that will rejuvenate and regenerate the heart of Newbury.”

• On the buses

• Other news

• Would you like to be part of the drumming troupe that leads this year’s Festival of Light? Music Charity Readipop is leading free workshops at 101 Outdoor Arts on Sundays throughout November and December. These drumming sessions will prepare the group for the parade in Reading on Saturday 7 December, then the Newbury parade on Sunday 15 December. For more information or to sign up please email hello@101outdoorarts.com. Suitable for anybody aged 12+ (under-18s accompanied by a participating adult). No previous experience required.

• West Berkshire Health & Wellbeing encourages and reminds everyone that, as winter approaches, it is time to check your eligibility for flu and COVID-19 vaccines. Book now here.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now Facebook group. Also see WBC’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the Facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on WBC’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Draft Carers Strategy 2024 – 27 – deadline 17 November 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 31 October 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes drums, bonfires, spooks, poplars, pumpkins and repairs – plus good news for the Corn Exchange’s funding drive and the final week of the consultation into Newbury’s trial pedestrianisation. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Ghost Walks & Fabulous Fireworks. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

Newbury’s pedestrianisation trial

If you live, work or/and have a business in Newbury, your opinions are requested about the proposed extension to pedestrianisation hours in the town centre, by completing the council’s survey before Tuesday 5 November. You will also find hard copies of the questionnaire at the Council Office at Market Street and Newbury Library.

The Council has for some time been planning to extend pedestrianised hours and intends to trial these changes in 2025. This trial will allow it to monitor and evaluate the revised hours and will include a statutory consultation process to gather more detailed feedback from all affected parties.

So this is an informal pre-trial consultation, which is a Yes/No exercise, to gauge public opinion before any decisions are made. If there is local support for the trial, the Council will apply to the Secretary of State to make an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO). If approval is granted, a six-month detailed consultation will follow during the ETRO trial to assess whether changes should be made permanent, amended or reverted.

You will be able to view the data and the results of the current pre-trial consultation on the main consultation hub page (same as above), which will be updated on 31 March 2025 when the results are published. If you have any questions about the survey, please email the Economic Development Team.

• The Corn Exchange

The Corn Exchange has recently received a £50,000 grant for the re-development of the Old Library in Newbury through West Berkshire Council’s latest round of CIL fund bids.

“The Corn Exchange Newbury is delighted to have received £50,000 from the CIL Funding Awards 2024,” a spokesperson told Penny Post. “We would like to thank West Berkshire Council for its support. This funding will go towards the redevelopment of the Old Library in Newbury, reopening it as a new arts hub for the community and permanent home to our creative participation work. This area of our work provides a lifeline to many local people, helping to reduce social isolation and loneliness; improve mental health; and support young people in building confidence and self-esteem through engagement with creative activity.”

More information on this project can be found here. More information on this and all the other successful bids from this funding round can be found here.

• Other news

• Newbury Lions are all set to go for their Fabulous Fireworks this Saturday 2 November at Newbury Racecourse. The weather is set fair and calm so it should be a lovely evening. Gates open at 5pm and the display starts at approximately 7:30pm. Tickets are not available on the gate and must be pre-bought from branches of Tesco, Newbury Building Society, The Lock Stock & Barrel Pub or online here. This is a huge fundraiser for the Lions Club of Newbury, which ploughs the money back to local residents and groups in need.

• Last week Penny was invited to Eight Bells for Mental Health Open Day at Newbury Quaker Meeting House to hear an inspiring talk by Kathy Stevenson from Thatcham about the cross channel swim she completed this summer that raised over £7,000 for the charity. Listen here to her radio interview with Kathy and Eight Bells staff and head of trustees Gary Norman about the invaluable service they provide.

• Would you like to be part of the drumming troupe that leads this year’s Festival of Light? Music Charity Readipop is leading some free workshops at 101 Outdoor Arts on Sundays throughout November and December. These drumming sessions will prepare the group for the parade in Reading on Saturday 7 December and then the Newbury parade on Sunday 15 December. For more information or to sign up please email hello@101outdoorarts.com. Suitable for anybody aged 12+ (under-18s accompanied by a participating adult). No previous experience required.

• Quick reminder how to stay safe this Halloween and bonfire season with important reminders from the Royal Berkshire Fire Service and the Environment Agency about fireworks and bonfire safety for people and animals, including the fines you can receive if you burn polluting household waste (you should only burn dry, untreated wood).

• Don’t forget that delicious Newbury Apple Juice is available to buy by the bottle from the Newbury Apple Day team. It makes a lovely Christmas present or an alternative to taking a bottle of wine to a dinner party. See here for details.

• You can also take your own garden apples to My Apple Juice in Hungerford to be pressed, pasteurised and bottled into delicious juice with your very own bespoke labels. See here for how it works. It’s crazy that 90% garden apples go to waste while 60% of the apples we eat and drink are imported.

• Nominations for West Berkshire Council’s Community Champion Awards close on Monday 11 November. The awards aim to celebrate the amazing work that residents, groups and volunteers do across the area. Click here to fill out the online nomination form.

• Quick reminder about Educafe’s free Cost of Living Support & Money Saving Service at Newbury Library every Wednesday until end of November. It is a welcoming, safe space for free guidance and support on budgeting, managing your household bills, sign-posting and understanding debt. See more details here.

• West Berkshire Health & Wellbeing encourages and reminds everyone that, as winter approaches, it is time to check your eligibility for flu and COVID-19 vaccines. Book now here.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. Also see West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Extension to Newbury Town Centre pedestrianisation hours – deadline 5 November 2024.
Draft Waste Management Strategy 2025-2032 – deadline 6 November 2024.
Draft Carers Strategy 2024 – 27 – deadline 17 November 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 24 October 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes heroes, repairs, fun, waste, flu, trees and apples – plus a reimagined canal, reactions to Newbury’s trial  pedestrianisation proposals, Enborne’s solar farm, Turkish delight and a scam warning. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Repair Café & Halloween Comedy Night. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Reimagining the canal

Plans have recently been announced to improve the appearance of and access to the Kennet and Avon Canal. I first became aware of this because of proposals, not yet confirmed, to provide some improvement in the Hungerford area, which is of interest to the Town Centre Strategy Steering Group which has canal-side improvements as one of its main priorities to investigate.

I haven’t had time to look into any of the details of this so lay before you verbatim the main part of the statement from WBC, the full text of which you can read here.

“West Berkshire Council is delighted to be working in partnership with the Greenham Trust, the Canal and River Trust and Sustrans, to pursue opportunities for access improvements to the Kennet and Avon towpath through the district.

“On 30 September a meeting was held at Padworth Village Hall, hosted by Sustrans. A range of stakeholders from the local area and wider, including potential funders, were briefed on the “Reimagining the Kennet & Avon” programme.

“This bold initiative being developed by the partnership aims to deliver, in stages and as resources allow, six projects centring on making the Kennet and Avon towpath more accessible across the District, so that everyone can share and enjoy the waterside environment. Stakeholders were shown a recently upgraded, accessible section of towpath and were invited to participate in the programme’s evolution and delivery.

“Working together and with valued input from other organisations such as local cycle group West Berkshire Spokes, the partners have already delivered:

• 1.7km of upgraded, surfaced towpath between Victoria Park and Ham Bridge, Newbury.
• 700 metres of improved route between Aldershot Water Bridge and Brimpton Road, east of Thatcham.
• 2.4km of widened, resurfaced towpath between Aldermaston Wharf and Ufton Lane.
• 1.25km of resurfaced route between Mill Road, Burghfield and Hissey’s Bridge, Calcot.
• 380 metres of reconstructed waterside path between Mill Road, Burghfield and the waterside near the Cunning Man pub.

“The partnership is seeking funding for sensitive design and delivery of improvements along the waterside corridor. The partners are agreed on the need for a holistic approach in developing proposals. Key considerations include:

• The sensitivity of the waterside environment and ecology.
• The need to make the towpath more robust and fit for the purposes it serves, giving access for anglers, boaters, considerate cyclists using National Cycle Network Route 4 and walkers with differing levels of mobility, and for relaxation and enjoyment.
• Opportunities to reduce risks associated with flooding.
• Opportunities to boost the economic vitality of towns and villages on route, tying in with Town Centre Strategies and local objectives.
• Heritage, reflecting the importance of the canal as a historic transport route for goods, coupled with multiple heritage assets along the corridor.
• Interpretation and wayfinding.”

• Pedestrianisation questions

The following is taken from the minutes of the 16 October meeting of Shaw-cum-Donnington Parish Council, under the heading “Parish Council’s response to WBC consultation to extend the hours of pedestrianisation in Newbury town centre”. The initials refer to individual councillors, all more fully identified in the minutes.

• Enborne’s solar farm

As mentioned last week, a public meeting was recently held to explain more about the solar farm project in Enborne. The event was organised by Calleva Community Energy, which is also running the project in conjunction with the local charity which owns the land. I wasn’t able to attend but it was described to me as having been “very positive”.

Planning permission has now been granted but there remains a lot of work to be done before spades can be put in the ground. More than anything else, the timing of the commencement will be determined by when a connection to the National Grid can be agreed. This can be a protracted business, often to an extent that could be seen as an active disincentive for anyone wanting to generate renewable energy. Whether the long delays that have happened in the past with these decisions will be tolerated by the new government (whose motto seems to be “just build it”) remains to be seen.

More news on this is expected within the next few months. Until then, it’s impossible to say when the work might start. More on this as soon as we have it.

• Other news

• It has been decided via consultation that the Italian Poplars on Stroud Green, will be replaced like for like. The old poplars were planted in the late 1960s and generally have a life span of about 50 to 60 years. As they get older, the trunk and stems become weaker, making them unsafe. Four of the trees have already fallen in the last three years during strong winds and storms. So the old trees will be purposely felled started in the first week of November and new poplars will be planted. The work is estimated to take about three weeks. Read more about the results of the consultation here.

• In other tree related news, Newbury Town Council has announced that they will be carrying out tree pollarding in Victoria Park in January 2025. This involves pruning the upper branches of trees to encourage healthy regrowth. Certain sections of the park will be temporarily cordoned off for the safety of park visitors and contractors. To learn more about this click here.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the Newtown Road Household Waste Recycling Centre, the Household Support Fund, half-term activities and more. Read it here.

• Delicious Newbury Apple Juice is available to buy by the bottle from the Newbury Apple Day team. It makes a lovely Christmas present or an alternative to taking a bottle of wine to a dinner party. See here for details.

• You can also take your own garden apples to My Apple Juice in Hungerford to be pressed, pasteurised and bottled into delicious juice with your very own bespoke labels. See here for how it works. It’s crazy that 90% garden apples go to waste while 60% of the apples we eat and drink are imported.

• Nominations for West Berkshire Council’s Community Champion Awards close on Monday 11 November. The awards aims to celebrate the amazing work that residents, groups and volunteers do across the area.  Click here to fill out the online nomination form.

• Every Wednesday in October and November at Newbury Library, Educafe is offering a free Cost of Living Support & Money Saving Service. It is a welcoming, safe space for free guidance and support on budgeting, managing your household bills, sign-posting and understanding debt. See more details here.

• West Berkshire Health & Wellbeing encourage and remind everyone, that as winter approaches it is time to check your eligibility for flu and COVID-19 vaccines. Book now here.

• As millions of pumpkins hit supermarket shelves and make their way to homes across the country, Forestry England is reminding us not to leave spent pumpkins in forests or woodlands regardless of well-meaning social media posts encouraging people to leave them for wildlife to eat.  Pumpkins are not natural to woodlands and can make some animals, including hedgehogs, very poorly. Decomposing food waste can also attract pests and spread disease.

• The Complaints & Standards Committee conducts regular, thorough reviews of the complaint-handing and review processes within Thames Valley Police, helping to ensure that the force achieves the highest levels of integrity and trust within the community. Volunteer Connect are currently looking for motivated individuals who are passionate about community, perhaps retired professionals or young adults wanting to pursue a career in public service. Full training will be given, including observation of frontline officers at work, and out of pocket expenses paid. If you are interested or would like further information, please email info@volunteerconnect.org.uk

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Extension to Newbury Town Centre pedestrianisation hours – deadline 5 November 2024.
Draft Waste Management Strategy 2025-2032 – deadline 6 November 2024.
Draft Carers Strategy 2024 – 27 – deadline 17 November 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 17 October 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes coffee, bulbs, apples, Paddington, repairs and roadworks – plus details confirmed for this year’s Remembrance Day parade and a forthcoming open evening about the Enborne solar farm project. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Strictly’s Shirley Ballas in conversation, and Repair Café. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Other news

• Last weekend the Mayor’s Coffee Morning managed to raise an amazing £470.70 to go directly to the Mayor’s chosen charity West Berks Foodbank. Well done to everyone who helped out and donated.

• Well done also to everyone who went along to help plant spring bulbs last Sunday, at Glendale Avenue and Middle Close. Some lovely pictures from the day can be found on Newbury Council’s FaceBook page. Looking forward to seeing them bloom in the springtime.

• Delicious Newbury Apple Juice is available to buy by the bottle from the Newbury Apple Day team. It makes a lovely Christmas present or an alternative to taking a bottle of wine to a dinner party. See here for details.

• You can also take your own garden apples to My Apple Juice in Hungerford to be pressed, pasteurised and bottled into delicious juice with your very own bespoke labels. See here for how it works. It’s crazy that 90% garden apples go to waste while 60% of the apples we eat and drink are imported.

• See here for our Guide to October half-term fun including lots to do in and around Newbury.

• West Berkshire Council’s Community Champion Awards are back and open for nominations. The awards aims to celebrate the amazing work that residents and volunteers do in the area. This year there are four categories: Community Group of the Year, Lifetime Achievement Award, Pat Eastop MBE Junior Citizen of the Year Award and Volunteer of the Year. Click here to fill out the online nomination form. Nominations close on Monday 11 November.

• As mentioned previously, Paddington Bear is now the latest resident of Newbury, relaxing on a bench in front of Camp Hopsons as part of a national Paddington Visits trail. Paddington’s creator Michael Bond is also relaxing in Newbury Library at the moment, until 2 November.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the Scrutiny Commission meeting on flooding, careers at West Berkshire Council, the Lets Get Mindful Scheme, half-term activities and more. Read it here.

• Newbury Library is holding a Menopause and Menstrual-Health Tea and Chat event for World Menopause Day on Friday 18 October, between 11.30am and 12.30pm. There will be relevant books available to borrow, information on support services, a “graffiti sticky note wall” to exchange information on what you have found beneficial, and the opportunity to chat with others about your concerns and experiences over a cup of tea or coffee.

• Every Wednesday in October & November at Newbury Library, Educafe is offering a free Cost of Living Support & Money Saving Service. It is a welcoming, safe space for free guidance and support on budgeting, managing your household bills, sign-posting and understanding debt. See more details here.

• The next Newbury and Thatcham Repair Café will be at Newbury Methodist Church Hall on Sunday 27 October. Skilled volunteers will do their best to repair your items, reducing waste and saving you money. Repairs are free, but donations are much appreciated. Refreshment also available. If you have any questions, get in touch at newburythatchamrepaircafe@gmail.com. To learn more click here.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Extension to Newbury Town Centre pedestrianisation hours – deadline 5 November 2024.
Draft Waste Management Strategy 2025-2032 – deadline 6 November 2024.
Draft Carers Strategy 2024 – 27 – deadline 17 November 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 10 October 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes bulbs, a bear, apples, coffee, fraud and music – plus a look at the recent non-decision at Eagle Quarter, an open day at a local school, Educafé and Newbury college team up, a pause for the Inspector’s thoughts in Enborne, an excellent new online flooding tool, a successful repair café and reducing fire risks. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Mayor’s Coffee Morning & Neighbourhood Watch Meeting: Fraud & Cyber Crime. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Eagle Quarter: a process in disarray

In the 10 October This Week with Brian column (scroll to the heading of this name), I take a look at the recent meeting of the Western Area Planning Committee which looked at, but then did not take a decision on, this very important application. It seems that there are some serious things wrong with a process that can only be deferred after a three-hour discussion, which didn’t allow enough time for a full consideration and debate and which suffered from some indifferent technology and preparedness.

• Open day at Falkland

There will be an open evening at Falkland School between 6-8pm on Thursday 24 October so that local residents and the wider community can see the plans for the new purpose-built classroom building, ask the project team any questions and have the opportunity to provide feedback before the project is considered for planning approval.

A statement from WBC says that “The project will provide a new two-storey building with eight classrooms, welfare facilities and break-out spaces. The existing modular units will then be demolished, and the liberated space re-landscaped to maximise the outside space for the children.” The scheme also aims to resolve the drainage problems the school is currently experiencing on their playing field and to rationalise the existing car park layout.”

Subject to planning approval, it is hoped that the building will be complete in readiness for the 2026 academic year, with work likely to start during summer 2025.

“We’ve had to wait a long time for this but this is very good news,” said David Marsh, one of three ward members for the area, all of whom are also on the Project Management Board. “The next step is to get the plans finalised and get them through the planning process. It’s very important that we continue to keep parents and carers advised of the progress as there will inevitably be some disruption, though every effort will be made to minimise this.”

Newbury College and Educafé are offering a new 12 week Job Support Club and English for Work course from November to provide additional support to non-native speakers within the community. The new collaboration, a statement from Newbury College explains, “underscores both organisations’ commitment to educational excellence and community empowerment, particularly for those new to the area or country.

The new courses are designed to provide “comprehensive language support, ensuring that individuals from diverse backgrounds can thrive both academically and socially. The partnership reflects a shared vision between Newbury College and Educafé of local collaboration to create inclusive educational opportunities that support personal and professional growth.”

Educafe’s community café at Newbury Library – which takes place on Wednesdays between 11am and 2pm – is a really excellent institution and one that Penny visits most weeks. Among its many achievements which help improve inclusivity, mental health and learning opportunities, it has seen hundreds of English Learners blossom thanks to its drop-in English conversation sessions, known as ‘Chatty Corner’: this offers, the statement continues, “a friendly but purposeful approach and acts as a springboard to further education, training, or employment.”

Clare Middleton, the Director of Educafé, said that “being welcomed to Newbury College will help reinforce they are part of our community and boost their confidence.” John Houghton, Vice Principal HE and Skills at Newbury College, added that “we are delighted to collaborate with Educafe on this important initiative. Our mission has always been to provide exceptional education that serves the community, and this partnership allows us to extend our reach and impact even further.”

• Enborne’s showmen

On 2 October, the examination of the local plan had a session which was devoted to looking at the policy RSA25 on which the the application 23/02596/FULMAJ for the travelling showpersons’ site in Enborne depends. The contention of the opponents was that, despite various housing needs assessments, there was in fact no need for the 24 plots. The fear in the community is not so much of their being used for the stated purposes but that, as happened at Micheldever near Winchester, that these end up having unauthorised and unwelcome travellers’ sites.

The inspector appeared to suggest that the removal of the 24-plot allocation in RSA25 was a possibility (permission has already been granted for four plots). This would then just leave the general DM20 policy. Any application – including, presumably, the one referred to above – would thus have to provide evidence of need, which the planners and/or committee members would then have to accept before an application could be passed.

Given that the “need” for the 24 plots was first mooted in 2015 but until recently there’s been no attempt to realise this doesn’t suggest that need was, or is, that urgent or compelling and is perhaps more of a “want” than a “need”. However, what I think doesn’t matter. It’s down to the Inspector to make his recommendations on the matter. Opinions differ on when this will be (some preliminary actions for WBC have been issued) but many seem to feel it will be a few weeks yet. It seems unlikely that the application will go to committee while we’re waiting for this to happen and for the consequences to be digested by WBC.

The fact that permission for four plots is extant mens that the Micheldever-type risk will apply, albeit on a smaller scale. However, whatever transpires there, WBC can be in no conceivable doubt of the local concerns and of a local example of how things can subsequently go wrong. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

I would repeat two bits of advice. First, anyone who is concerned about this should contact their ward member/s (aka district councillor/s) whose details can be found here. Second, they should also make their comments known about application 23/02596/FULMAJ. Responses can still be made until the application is determined.

• Repair Cafe success

During the eight Newbury & Thatcham Repair Cafes so far this year, nearly 1,000kg (1 tonne) of items have been prevented from going to waste-processing or landfill.  The Repair Café is very happy it can provide this service for the community.

A peacock, a rabbit, and two teddy bears visited the Newbury and Thatcham Repair Café in Thatcham on Sunday 29 September.  They were amongst the 76 items brought in for repair by talented volunteers, including an eclectic mix of electrical and electronic items, wooden items and a mobility rollator, the second one that has been fixed this year, trousers and jumpers were mended and garden tools repaired and sharpened.

These repairs reflect the wide skillset of the volunteers and how determined the volunteers are to revive cherished and everyday items. The next Repair Cafe is in Newbury Methodist Church Hall on Sunday 27 October at 2pm. Please contact newburythatchamrepaircafe@gmail.com for more details.

• Reduce your risk of a house fire

The Public Protection Partnership and Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service are offering electric blanket & portable heater safety testing at Newbury Fire Station on Tuesday 29 October 9.30am – 3.30pm drop-in. Also an important reminder to test your smoke alarms.

Around 43 fires a year are caused by faulty electric blankets usually when the heating element overheating. They should be stored flat, rolled up, or loosely folded to prevent damaging the internal wiring. Heaters cause around three fires a day in England. They should be kept away from furniture and curtains and should not be used for drying clothes.

Residents will be given advice and literature on how to keep themselves safe when using an electric blanket or portable heater at home and how to check for themselves if the item has any faults which could make it unsafe to use. Residents will also be provided with information from the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service about how they can receive a free ‘Safe and Well’ visit at their homes. For more information see here.

• Other news

• Newbury Town Council is looking for volunteers to help 1,000 plant spring blubs, at Middle Close and Glendale Avenue this Sunday 13 October from 10am. The bulbs will be traditional native spring flowers, including daffodils, wild garlic and crocuses. Bring a trowel and some gloves if you have them, but if not, there’ll be some on the day you can borrow. Click here for more information.

• Also on Sunday 13 October Newbury Environmental & Wildlife Team welcomes volunteers to their first working party at the Northcroft Meadows Nature Reserve to help clear some overgrown brambles and scrub in the meadows to open up the paths.. Meet at noon at the junction of Moor Lane and Hill Road, RG14 1RT (What 3 words: gasp music atoms). NEWT has a selection of hand tools and battery electric tools and PPE, but you are free to bring your own secateurs or loppers, gloves and eye protection.
Please wear sturdy footwear and clothing and bring your own refreshments. If you can help please let Steve know on 07476 810230.

• This Friday 12 October, it’s the Mayor’s Coffee Morning, fundraising money for West Berks Food Banks. There will be tea, coffee and homemade cakes. Taking place between 10am and 12noon at the Council Chamber of Newbury Town Hall. Click here for more information.

• The organisers of last Saturday’s Newbury Apple Day at Newbury Market thanks everyone who helped pick and press apples on the day. A lot of fun was had by all and it raised awareness of the Newbury’s community orchards. If you would like to buy some pasteurised Newbury Apple Juice made from local apples please contact Blake at blake.ludwig@googlemail.com. Proceeds in aid of next year’s event.

• Business Ambassadors are urgently needed by Education Business Partnership to support a Scrap Challenge at Park House School on Wednesday 16 October. Students will work as a team putting their imagination and engineering skills to the test with Cardboard City. Today’s cities are highly varied throughout the world, ideally to best suit the needs of their residents.  Students will design and create a cardboard city of their own from recycled materials.  Business Ambassadors will assist students by asking them about their design and offering suggestions for how they could improve them. No prior preparation is required.

• Yes it’s true, Paddington is now relaxing on a bench infront of Camp Hopsons as part of a national Paddington Visits trail. This video of the unveiling explains how the statue was arranged by Newbury BID and West Berkshire Council. Paddington’s creator Michael Bond is also relaxing in Newbury Library at the moment, very fitting as he was born in West Mills and lived the first six months of his life in Newbury. This promotion is building up to the excitement about the release of the next Paddington film, Paddington in Peru on 8 November.

• All welcome at the next West Berks Neighbourhood Watch Meeting which focuses on Fraud and Cyber Crime with Mark Gosland from Thames Valley Police on Tuesday 15 October from 7.15 pm in Kersey Hall at the Waterside Centre, Newbury RG14 1DS (entrance down the side of Camp Hopson). There will also be reports from Inspector Matt Gow of West Berkshire Police and Phil Knight of Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service. There will be crime prevention literature available.   If you wish to set up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme in your road, please contact Angela Money BEM on 01635 40866 / 07774 962641.

• Do you know an adult learner who deserves recognition at this year’s Learner Achievement Awards, which celebrates the success of adult learning in the district, often under tough circumstances. Nominate them here by Friday 18 October at 5pm.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire have released their Annual Impact Report 2023-24. You can read the full report here, but a few highlights include: the charity celebrating its 50th anniversary year, facilitating 18 workshops attended by 214 individuals, 403 individuals given advice and information on volunteering, and 333 currently active volunteering roles.

• Newbury Library are holding a Menopause and Menstrual-Health Tea and Chat event for World Menopause Day on Friday 18 October, between 11.30am to 12.30pm. There will be relevant books available to borrow, information on support services, a ‘graffiti sticky note wall’ to exchange information on what you have found beneficial, and the opportunity to chat with others about your concerns and experiences over a cup of tea or coffee.

• West Berkshire Council reports that some residents have received text messages about fake Penalty Charge Notices. Please note that the Council never send Penalty Charge Notices via text. Should you receive a text like this, be aware that it is a scam and delete/block the number.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the new Paddington Bear statue, Pension Credit, free safety testing for heaters and electric blankets, a proposal for a new building at Falkland Primary School and more. Read it here.

• Musicians aged 18 years or under are invited to perform as a solo or duo at this year’s Christmas Lights Switch On on Saturday 16 November. Parents or carers can use the following link to sign up: buff.ly/3N7n7Xo

• The Global Educational Trust (GET) is a new outlet on Northbrook Street in Newbury (where Superdrug was), where residents can get free books. The goal of GET is to make reading more accessible to everyone. Visitors can take home up to three books, totally free. If you would like to volunteer, email info@globaleducationaltrust.org.

• Every Wednesday in October & November at Newbury Library, Educafe is offering a free Cost of Living Support & Money Saving Service. It is a welcoming, safe space for free guidance and support on budgeting, managing your household bills, sign-posting and understanding debt. See more details here.

• The next Newbury and Thatcham Repair Café will be at Newbury Methodist Church Hall on Sunday 27 October. Skilled volunteers will do their best to repair your items, reducing waste and saving you money. Repairs are free, but donations are much appreciated. Refreshment also available. If you have any questions, get in touch at newburythatchamrepaircafe@gmail.com. To learn more click here.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Extension to Newbury Town Centre pedestrianisation hours – deadline 5 November 2024.
Draft Waste Management Strategy 2025-2032 – deadline 6 November 2024.
Draft Carers Strategy 2024 – 27 – deadline 17 November 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 3 October 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes books, bears, breakfasts, walks, waste and volunteers – plus decision day for the eagle deferred, a racecourse residents’ association, going against the officers, a flood update from Speen, Faraday’s football, bloom awards, a reminder about the showmen in Enborne, and an interview with the Chair of WBC’s Scrutiny Commission. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Newbury Apple Day and Roman Family Fun Day. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Eagle o’clock: a decision deferred

The Western Area Planning Committee met on 3 October to consider application 23/02094/FULMAJ for what is the Kennet centre and what will be, if the application is passed (or sent up to the District Planning Committee), known as Eagle Quarter. The officers have recommended approval, following long discussions with the applicant.

The application summary is: “Full planning permission for the redevelopment of the Kennet Centre comprising the partial demolition of the existing building on site and the development of new residential dwellings (Use Class C3) and residents ancillary facilities; commercial, business and service floorspace including office (Class E (a, b, c, d, e, f, and g)); access, parking, and cycle parking; landscaping and open space; sustainable energy installations; associated works, and alterations to the retained Vue Cinema and multi-storey car park.”

The debate centred on four main aspects, all of which have been touched upon in the various comments and objections that have been made over the last few years. These are, in no particular order:

• The scale and bulk;
• The economic effects on the town;
• The lack of any affordable housing;
• Parking issues.

All of these points also led back to the over-arching question of the viability of the scheme from the developers’ point of view. Viability assessments (which can be used by developer or the planning authority to demonstrate the the developer’s mitigation contributions or conditions need to be adjusted) have been done and others will follow as the realities of the economics become clear: however, the more that’s completed the less chance there is to mitigate anything, except financially.

The discussion also involved some hypothetical forays into what other development options might be available: David Peacock of the Newbury Society, for instance, observed that “if this scheme is not viable without affordable homes then it’s the wrong scheme.”

However, the officers stressed several times that this was the result of long negotiations with the applicant: they clearly feel that this was pretty much the best outcome they’re likely to get. Moreover, as the meeting was reminded more than once, the committee can only discuss the matter that is put before it, not anything else that it might wish had been.

Shortly after the recess at about 9.30pm, Councillor Adrian Abbs proposed that, given the district-wide implications (and, as a secondary issue, the need for the officers to answer further questions), the matter should be referred to the District Planning Committee. After some discussion – which threatened to eat into the time for a debate, were the suggestion to be defeated – the motion was put, and carried.

There then followed a further discussion in which several members, including Councillors Hooker, Dick and Amirtharaj, expressed their disappointment at this, feeling that the WAPC and its attendees had convened in order to reach a decision. Councillor Vickers pointed out that WBC’s constitution provided for such an eventuality and, along with Councillor Gaines, stressed that the district-wide implications were important.

The Chairman formally closed the meeting at 9.55pm. The replay, if I can use so colloquial a term, will take place at the meeting of the District Planning Committee (DPC) on Wednesday 13 November.

More detailed reflections on what took place on 3 October – the recording of which the members of the DPC who aren’t on WAPC will presumably by then have watched – will follow from me next week. In the meantime, residents of Newbury, and the applicants, will need to wait to discover what is decided. If the application is rejected, it’s almost certainly going to be the subject of an appeal.

• Flooding in Speen

In late January 2024, ward members Antony Amirtharaj and Martha Vickers sent a letter to Speen residents. This started off by expressing their “sorrow for the inconvenience, loss, and emotional toll of flooded houses and properties. We want to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to help.”

It went on to describe some of the measures that the Council and others were taking, the lessons that could be learned and the development of the statutory Section 19 and Section 18 investigations under the Flood Risk Management Act. They also encouraged people to contact them if they’d been affected by flooding and to keep an eye on the National Flood Forum’s website on what residents can do to best protect their property against the effects of flooding.

I thought it worth contacting the ward members to see if there was an update. Both of them got back to me. Martha Vickers explained that they tended to divide such tasks between them and that this project was on Antony’s side of the fence.

“I have been actively attending the Newbury Flood and Drainage Forum meeting until July before the holiday period,” Antony Amirtharaj told us. “The forum involves us councillors, Executive members Stuart Gourley and Nigel Foot and local residents. The next meeting will be later this month.”

He added that he was eagerly awaiting the Section 19 report “to be completed and provided to us for review.” Antony is a member of the Scrutiny Commission – as is, having been recently appointed, Martha Vickers – and he added that he was, with that hat on, looking forward to receiving the report “and the flooding situation update from the officers for the flooding situation in Speed ward and West Berkshire in general.”

You can contact Antony Amirtharaj and Martha Vickers – and any other WBC councillor/s – by visiting this page onWBC’s website.

• Newbury in bloom

• Other news

• This Saturday 5 October is Newbury Apple Day at Newbury Market. Help prepare and press apples to make fresh juice and learn about the community orchards around Newbury. If you have any spare apples from your garden, bring them along and donate them to the community juice. If you have an apple tree in your garden and you want to find out what species it is, bring along some fruit and leaves and they will try and identify it for you. Everyone is welcome and children can have a go with the apple press. There will the opportunity to buy apple cakes and other homemade apple goodies. Click here for more information.

• The Bite Express Restaurant, at the junction of Bartholomew and Pound Streets, is bringing the authentic Turkish breakfast experience for the first time ever to Newbury. From freshly baked simit, to rich Turkish tea, flavourful menemen, Turkish poached eggs and more – the breakfast spread is a feast for the eyes and taste buds, bringing delicious flavours of Turkey right to your table every Sunday from 10am. It is open every evening of the week for supper and lunch is served Thursday to Sunday. See more details on its Facebook page here.

• This Saturday 5 October, ARK’s Annual Riverbank Walk will be at The Wilderness, a beautiful private fishery. The walk starts and finishes at Richens Lodge in Halfway between Newbury and Hungerford. There is a public 3km walk in the morning and a longer member’s walk in the afternoon – approximately 5.6km. Both walks are circular, with ARK marshals along the route. If you wish to do the longer afternoon walk and are not a member, you can join up to become a member on the day. See here for directions to the walk starting point and timings. Sorry no dogs, buggies or unaccompanied children, sturdy footwear essential. For all enquiries email anna@riverkennet.org.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is looking for a confident, organised person to join its team of car scheme office volunteers. The role involves handling requests for transport from people with mobility problems over the telephone and arranging drivers. For this role they ask for long-term commitment of at least one set morning per week (10am-1pm, ideally Monday or Friday). For more details email vbase@vcwb.org.uk, quoting reference NY1375.

• Rumour has it that a very special bear will be visiting Newbury from next Tuesday 8 October. Keep an eye open for him in front of Camp Hopsons…

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers career opportunities at West Berks Council, its Customer Charter, the Northcroft Lido, Waste Management Strategy draft drop-ins and more. Read it here.

• Please have your say on West Berkshire Council‘s draft Waste Management Strategy which includes changing how often black bins are collected, reviewing household waste containers, expanding the range of items recycled, improving street cleanliness, and tackling fly-tipping. It is holding drop-in sessions at local libraries – see dates and times here. For our thoughts on these issues see the Waste Management section of This Week with Brian.

• The Global Educational Trust (GET) is a new outlet on Northbrook Street in Newbury (where Superdrug was), where residents can get free books. The goal of GET is to make reading more accessible to everyone. Visitors can take home up to three books, totally free. If you would like to volunteer, email info@globaleducationaltrust.org.

• Every Wednesday in October & November at Newbury Library, Educafe is offering a free Cost of Living Support & Money Saving Service. It is a welcoming, safe space for free guidance and support on budgeting, managing your household bills, sign-posting and understanding debt. See more details here.

• The next Newbury and Thatcham Repair Café will be at Newbury Methodist Church Hall on Sunday 27 October. Skilled volunteers will do their best to repair your items, reducing waste and saving you money. Repairs are free, but donations are much appreciated. Refreshment also available. If you have any questions, get in touch at newburythatchamrepaircafe@gmail.com. To learn more click here.

• Thatcham Town Harriers is looking for new members to join its adult female football team, the HarriHERS. It welcomes any females aged 16+, no matter their football experience or ability. They play year-round, every Wednesday from 8pm to 9pm at Nuffield Health Centre, Newbury. It costs £3 per session, per person and can be booked via the TicketSource page.

• West Berkshire Council is now accepting nominations for its annual Learner Achievement Awards, which celebrates the success of adult learning in the district, often under tough circumstances. Each winner receives a cash prize and gets an invite to the awards ceremony on Friday 8 November. If you know an adult learner who deserves recognition and would like to celebrate their successes, make a nomination here. The deadline for all nominations is Friday 18 October at 5pm.

• Quick reminder about partial closure of the M4 Junction 12 roundabout in a project that is expected to last several months. It will be completed over two phases, including some slip-road closures onto and off the M4. You can find details about these phases here. Overnight closures will affect parts of the roundabout starting this week and will be ongoing until Friday 11 October. The overall project is expected to be completed in March 2025.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Extension to Newbury Town Centre pedestrianisation hours – deadline 5 November 2024.
Draft Waste Management Strategy 2025-2032 – deadline 6 November 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 26 September 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes blooms, buses, books, football and learner achievements – plus a tetchy response to roadwork chaos, pedestrianisation plans in Newbury and the likely timetable for the showmen’s application in Enborne. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Wash Common Community Festival and Benefice Weekend of Celebrations. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Digging in

The relationship between a highways authority and the various utility companies that regularly need to dig up the roads can be fraught. The council has little power to stop such work but generally gets the blame for any disruption, even when the utility company starts work without any permission or even prior notification.

Take this week in Newbury. SSE caused chaos in Hambridge Road when it set up four-way traffic lights and got the pneumatic drills out, despite the fact that West Berkshire Council (WBC) had not been told this was happening. Newbury News reported that delays of up to two hours were taking place.

The incident provoked an understandably tetchy response from the Council: “We are aware and understand how frustrating the traffic lights on Hambridge Road, Newbury have been for drivers,” a statement read. “We want to clarify the situation – SSE did not have permission to set up the lights or carry out any work in that area and we’ve asked them to vacate the site as they are occupying the highway illegally.

• Enborne’s showmen

We’ve covered this matter in some detail over the last month or so (see previous columns below). This has focused in particular on what might happen if the application 23/02596/FULMAJ is approved and what steps WBC might then take to ensure that the site is only used for the stated purposes and not, as happened in Micheldever and elsewhere, perverted into something different and less welcome. There have been a number of sideshows in this discussion but the main issues, and likely timeline, seems to be as follows:

• On or shortly after 3 October, the Planning Inspector will deliver his verdict on the soundness or otherwise of policy SPA25 which underpins the application. If he decides it’s unsound, the matter will lapse until this is resolved. If he approves it, we move to step two.
• At its meeting on 23 September (the minutes of which will be available here in due course), Enborne PC agreed to set aside a budget for legal advice and possible legal action regarding the policy and the application, if these are approved. I understand that this is seen as a last resort. If a legal challenge of any kind is mounted, this may delay the matter coming before the Western Area Planning Committee (WAPC).
• When the matter does eventually come to WAPC (which it will if the officers are minded to approve it), it will be given a thorough airing. Such events afford the opportunity for ward members to make their case on behalf of their residents. I imagine that one of the three ward members will avail themselves of this opportunity. It would certainly look odd if they didn’t.
• Once decided (either at WAPC or, possibly, at the District Planning Committee if it’s felt there are important district-wide implications), conditions will then need to be agreed. There won’t be a great deal of time to discuss these. It’s therefore to be hoped that WBC has given careful consideration to all the measures that it might be able to insist upon in order to ensure that whatever decision is taken is adhered to. I suggested some of these most recently in the 5 September edition of this column (see below) and on 12 September provided WBC’s answers.

This is the crux of the matter. The applicant, the opponents and all the other parties can make all the claims, counter-claims and statements they wish but the basic question is very simple: if the application is approved, does WBC have the ability to ensure it’s enforced?

This is not to cast any doubt on the assurances of the applicant that the site is only intended for its stated purposes. Properties can change hands and other owners may have other ideas. Given the way the application has been framed and the limits of a planning authority’s powers, providing watertight safeguards may be a difficult thing for WBC to pull off. Back in 2002, Winchester CC didn’t try to do this with the original Michedever application and now wishes it had. WBC should learn from this.

I would offer two bits of advice. First, anyone who is concerned about this should contact their ward member/s (aka district councillor/s) whose details can be found here. Second, they should also make their comments known about application 23/02596/FULMAJ. Responses can still be made until the application is determined.

The matter is not for Enborne PC to resolve; only WBC as the planning authority can do this. It alone has the responsibility for ensuring that its decisions are abided by and a repetition of Micheldever is avoided. This may be more difficult to do than it would like, but that’s its job. One thing’s for sure: if anything goes wrong, WBC certainly can’t say that it wasn’t warned.

• Other news

• This Saturday 28 September do pop along to Wash Common Community Festival at Falkland Cricket Club – we’ll be there so come and say hello. It is part of the Benefice Weekend of Celebrations from Friday 27 to Sunday 29 September that includes a Flower Festival at St Michael’s Church in Enbourne.

• Congratulations to all the Newbury in Bloom entrants and winners who were presented with their prize at the Corn Exchange on 18 September. As part of the presentation evening, a special award was given for the “Dedication to Horticulture within their Community” to Mr Doug Marsh of Lower Raymond Almshouses. To learn more about the event, as well as the full list of winners, click here.

• Last chance to have your say on West Berks bus services. The deadline is midnight this Sunday 29 September to complete the survey here. The more feedback we give, the better the services will become.

• Every Wednesday in October & November at Newbury Library, Educafe is offering a free Cost of Living Support & Money Saving Service. It is a welcoming, safe space for free guidance and support on budgeting, managing your household bills, sign-posting and understanding debt. See more details here.

• Ray Prior has been entertaining and educating crowds with his falconry display for decades but now it is time for him to hang up his gauntlet and retire from public appearances. Penny had the opportunity to admire his birds (including a 60 year old eagle) and chat to Ray after his last display at Newbury Show last Sunday. Watch video here.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the pedestrianisation of Newbury Town Centre, the new Kennet Valley Resource Base, the Waste Management Strategy draft, the Electoral Canvass and more. Read it here.

• The Global Educational Trust (GET) is set to open a new outlet on Northbrook Street in Newbury (where Superdrug was), where residents will be able to get free books. The goal of GET is to make reading more accessible to everyone. and its model allows visitors to take home up to three books, totally free. The charity has made a call for volunteers to help in a variety of roles. If you would like to volunteer, email info@globaleducationaltrust.org and put “Newbury Volunteer” in the header. The new shop is expected to open by the end of September.

• Calling local authors – showcase your work at Newbury Library’s Local Author Book Fair on Saturday 23 November. It’s a perfect opportunity for members of the public to chat to local authors about what they have published, and to network. A table costs £10.  If you would like to learn more, get in touch at library@westberks.gov.uk.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people for work? EBP needs volunteers for in-school sessions across Newbury, Thatcham, Hungerford and Kintbury. It is also looking for work experience placements this autumn, and invites local businesses and organisations to join its Destinations Expo 2024 on Thursday 10 October at Newbury College. See here for more details and how to apply.

• Thatcham Town Harriers is looking for new members to join its adult female football team, the HarriHERS. It welcomes any females aged 16+, no matter their football experience or ability. They play year-round, every Wednesday from 8pm to 9pm at Nuffield Health Centre, Newbury. It costs £3 per session, per person and can be booked via the TicketSource page.

• West Berkshire Council is now accepting nominations for its annual Learner Achievement Awards, which celebrates the success of adult learning in the district, often under tough circumstances. Each winner receives a cash prize and gets an invite to the awards ceremony on Friday 8 November. If you know an adult learner who deserves recognition and would like to celebrate their successes, make a nomination here. The deadline for all nominations is Friday 18 October at 5pm.

• Quick reminder about partial closure of the M4 Junction 12 roundabout in a project that is expected to last several months. It will be completed over two phases, including some slip-road closures onto and off the M4. You can find details about these phases here. Overnight closures will affect parts of the roundabout starting this week and will be ongoing until Friday 11 October. The overall project is expected to be completed in March 2025.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

West Berkshire Bus Service Survey 2024 – deadline extended to 29 September 2024.
Argyle Rd, Hampton Rd and Derby Rd, Newbury: Proposed 20mph speed limit by Traffic Regulation Order (Ref: 9529) – deadline 3 October 2024.
Extension to Newbury Town Centre pedestrianisation hours – deadline 5 November 2024.
Draft Waste Management Strategy 2025-2032 – deadline 6 November 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 19 September 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes buses, authors, gigs, football, jobs and roadworks – plus a look at a local community orchard, planning approval for the Pound Street scheme, success on the cricket pitch, the decision of the Eagle and the latest from the imminent Newbury Show. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Newbury Show and Community Harvest. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Community orchards

Over the years Growing Newbury Green has planted several Community Orchards in Newbury. You can listen here to Penny’s interview with Tony Hammond about how the orchards were set up and how they are run.

Local residents are invited to community harvests on Saturday 21 September from 11am at Sayers Close Orchard in Greenham, RG14 7UU (on land between Sayers Close and Equine Way – park in Equine Way) and Thursday 26 September at Barn Crescent, off Elizabeth Avenue, RG14 6HD for an after-school event from 5pm. At Barn Crescent there are two Winston apple trees at the Middle Way end of the site that don’t ripen until the end of October, so they need to left longer, but are great for a Christmas crop. See more details here.

• Pound Street approval

On 18 September, WBC’s Western Area Planning Committee approved the plans for “demolition of existing buildings (including former Jewson’s site); existing dwellings 26 and 28 Pound Street; and, 28a Pound Street (former Newbury Bathroom Store) and erection of 79no. residential dwellings alongside access works, landscaping, open space, drainage and other associated works,” which can more pithily be referred to as application 23/02782/FULMAJ.

The matter only went to committee because of the number of objections (rather than a call in by a ward member), and I understand that most of these had been addressed by the applicant in any case. With the usual raft of conditions, and despite some concerns about the lack of green spaces on the site, the application was passed unanimously.

“The members had a good debate and made some useful suggestions,” a spokesperson for SP Broadway (which has worked with the developers on the communications for the project) told us on 19 September. “We were pleased members supported the scheme, which they considered an excellent reuse of a derelict brownfield site in a sustainable location.” There’s no word yet on when work may start.

The process towards the approval would probably have been helped by the good communications and PR approach adopted by the developers and SP Broadway throughout the project, which included leaflets, online consultations and communications with the WBC members. Other developers could learn from this. A similar pattern has been followed with a smaller site in Hungerford, which has yet to be determined.

• Cricket success

Congratulations to Community United for the success of its fourth annual One Community Cricket and Family Fun Day hosted at Falkland Cricket Club last Sunday 15 September. The new #OneCommunity Cricket champion team 2024 is Newbury Indian Community, who defeated last year’s defending champions Thames Valley Police West Berkshire.

The organisers would like to thank all their supporters including Newbury Indian Community, TVP West Berkshire, Newbury Town Council, Time to Talk, Alliance for Cohesion and Racial Equality (ACRE), Utulivu Women’s Group, Newbury Warriors, Bradfield Women, Fink Street Food, Newbury Youth, Berkshire Youth and West Berkshire Muslim Centre. If you are interested in taking part in the next year’s event, please email: hello@communityunited.uk

• Eagle Quarter

A reminder (see last week’s column below) that a decision will be taken on the re-development plans for the Kennet Centre at a special meeting of WBC’s Western Area Planning Committee on 3 October.

• Other news

• To support World Car Free Day this Sunday 22 September, West Berkshire Council is again partnering with local bus operators to offer free bus travel across the district for the day on Reading Buses JetBlack, 15, 16, 26 and 33, Stagecoach 32, Thames Travel X34. In addition to the usual Sunday bus services, there will be a special one-off service on the X34 between Newbury and Didcot. (Newbury Show Buses are not included in this event.) See more details here. Free Bus Travel is also being planned on Saturday 16 November, Saturday 14 December and Saturday 21 December in the run-up to Christmas.

• The Global Educational Trust (GET) is set to open a new outlet on Northbrook Street in Newbury (where Superdrug was), where residents will be able to get free books. The goal of GET is to make reading more accessible to everyone and its model allows visitors to take home up to three books, totally free. The charity has made a call for volunteers to help in a variety of roles. If you would like to volunteer, email info@globaleducationaltrust.org and put “Newbury Volunteer” in the header. The new shop is expected to open by the end of September.

• Calling local authors – showcase your work at Newbury Library’s Local Author Book Fair on Saturday 23 November. It’s a perfect opportunity for members of the public to chat to local authors about what they have published, and to network. A table costs £10.  If you would like to learn more, get in touch at library@westberks.gov.uk.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people for work? EBP needs volunteers for in-school sessions across Newbury, Thatcham, Hungerford and Kintbury. It is also looking for work experience placements this autumn, and invites local businesses and organisations to join its Destinations Expo 2024 on Thursday 10 October at Newbury College. See here for more details and how to apply.

• Thatcham Town Harriers is looking for new members to join its adult female football team, the HarriHERS. It welcomes any females aged 16+, no matter their football experience or ability. They play year-round, every Wednesday from 8pm to 9pm at Nuffield Health Centre, Newbury. It cost £3 per session, per person and can be booked via the TicketSource page.

• West Berkshire Council is now accepting nominations for its annual Learner Achievement Awards, which celebrates the success of adult learning in the district, often under tough circumstances. Each winner receives a cash prize and gets an invite to the awards ceremony on Friday 8 November. If you know an adult learner who deserves recognition and would like to celebrate their successes, make a nomination here. The deadline for all nominations is Friday 18 October at 5pm.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers free bus day, garden waste subscription information, emergency plans and more. Read it here.

• To find out about live vacancies, employability advice, training opportunities and work experience, pop along to the Job Fair being run by the DWP on Wednesday 25 September from 10am to 12.30pm at The Kennet Centre, Newbury, RG14 5EN. See here for details.

• Quick reminder about partial closure of the M4 Junction 12 roundabout in a project that is expected to last several months. It will be completed over two phases, including some slip-road closures onto and off the M4. You can find details about these phases here. Overnight closures will affect parts of the roundabout starting this week and will be ongoing until Friday 11 October. The overall project is expected to be completed in March 2025.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

West Berkshire Bus Service Survey 2024 – deadline extended to 29 September 2024.
Argyle Rd, Hampton Rd and Derby Rd, Newbury: Proposed 20mph speed limit by Traffic Regulation Order (Ref: 9529) – deadline 3 October 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 12 September 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes bats, batteries, love letters, charity awards, cricket and sewing – plus D-day looms for the Kennet Centre, an 85th birthday is celebrated, questions are (sort of) answered regarding Enborne’s showmen, a reminder about a hornet in Hamstead Marshall and the latest news from the Newbury Show. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include One Community Cricket & Newbury Stitch Fair. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• The Eagle is landing

Lochailort acquired the Kennet Centre in Newbury in the month that Covid struck (if anyone can remember that far back). Since then, the company has been trying to get plans finalised to replace the rather dilapidated shopping centre with something radically different: this will include retail space, flats and start-up units, as well as opening up a new route from the Market Square to Bartholomew Street. The new development will, if realised, be called Eagle Quarter.

Projects on this scale never pass without opposition and this one was no exception. As well as concerns about the level of affordable housing, the main worry was the height and general scale. We’ve covered the various issues on numerous occasions in previous columns and have summarised the views of the main actors in the drama, principal among which are West Berkshire Council, Newbury Town Council, the Newbury Society and, of course, Lochailort.

Discussions were held, an application was lodged, considered, rejected and appealed against. Then there was a pause and a re-think and the process in many ways started again, leading to further discussions. It was always hoped that something would be decided in the autumn. It seems that it will be.

I spoke to Lochailort’s MD Hugo Haig on 12 September and he said he felt that, finally, all the main issues and concerns that had been raised by opponents had been addressed. Of course, the final version may not be exactly to the liking of any party – but such things rarely are. Planning, like politics, is in many ways an exercise in the art of the possible: finding the best, or least bad, solution with which everyone can live.

This proposition will be put to the test at an extraordinary meeting of WBC’s Western Area Planning Committee on Thursday 3 October: the agenda, including what’s likely to be a pretty meaty document pack, will appear here no less than a week beforehand. Matters would not have reached this stage unless the officers were minded to recommend approval. The application will be given a thorough airing in this one-agenda-item meeting and the members will then vote on the proposal.

It’s possible that it may be referred to the District Planning Committee. If it isn’t, a decision will be expected on the night. This will come with a raft of conditions, many of which will need to be discharged before any work starts. If the application is approved, until these conditions are studied it will not be possible for any start date to be suggested. However, I imagine that Lochailort will want to get cracking as soon as possible, if for no other reason than that build costs are only going one way at the moment and are already a good deal higher than when the plans were first drawn up.

See this separate post for more on the background to the application.

• Other news

• Quick reminder that Friends of the Earth Newbury are hosting a public bat walk this Friday 13 September as part of its Newbury Nature Corridor project with ecologist and member of the Berkshire Bat Group, Harriet Baber. Meeting at the Lockdown Wood plaque in Goldwell Park at 7.30pm. Bat detectors provided, please bring suitable footwear for muddy conditions and warm clothing, plus a torch for the return in the dark. This event depends on dry mild weather, so please check the facebook page here for any updates.

• Recycling your household batteries just got a whole lot easier. From this week, they will be collected right from your kerbside by the council.  To learn how to bag and where to place them click here for more information.

• Last chance to nominate a Charity, Volunteer, Trustee, Fundraiser or Community Event of the Year. The official deadline for the Greenham Trust Charity Awards 2024 is Friday 13 September – however Greenham Trust has advised us they will in fact accept entries submitted over the weekend by Monday 16 September. See how to apply here. The Charity Awards Ceremony is on Thursday 7 November at Newbury Corn Exchange with the After Party at The Waterside Centre.

• This week the New Era Players have been performing their production of Love Letter by A.R.Gurney, which is running until Saturday 14 September. The play, which was a hit on Broadway, follows the bittersweet love story between a dutiful lawyer and a lively, unstable artist. Click here for tickets at the New Era Theatre, St Georges Community Centre, Andover Road, Newbury.

• This weekend it’s the One Community Cricket and Family Fun Day on Saturday 15 September from 10am to 4pm at Falkland Cricket Club, in Enborne, Newbury.  There will be food, music, activities for kids, as well a cricket games. If you want to know more, contact Community United by email at hello@communityunited.uk.

• Calling local fabric lovers and sewing bees – this year’s Newbury Stitch Fair & Sewing Workshops is coming to The Kennet Centre in Newbury on Tuesday 17 and Wednesday 18 September. Don’t miss the great fabric bargains and book some great workshops including Sew a Stretch Knit Top or an Infinity Scarf, Classic Camisole or Cosmetic Caddy with Wendy Gardiner. You can also learn Indian Block Printing with Marion Scott-Baker. See all details here.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the new kerbside battery collection, a special facility at Kennet Valley Primary School, free bus travel day, and more. Read it here.

• National Highways has reported that it will need to close part of the M4 Junction 12 roundabout, in a project that is expected to last several months and completed over two phases, including some slip road closures onto and off the M4. You can find details about these phases here. Overnight closures will affect parts of the roundabout starting from next Monday 16 September until Friday 11 October. The overall project is expected to be completed in March 2025.

• Last chance to have your say on proposed changes to parking charges in West Berkshire. For an outline of the new the charges being proposed, including the introduction of evening and weekend charges, we suggest visiting this West Berks Council webpage. Then complete this brief survey by midnight on Friday 13 September 2024.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. Also see West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• Quick reminder that unwanted or broken bikes can be taken to Newbury Community Project/Community Resource Centre who will fix them up and sell them on, with proceeds going to volunteering and training opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged adults and young people in the local community. Get in touch at enquiries@cfpnewbury.org or call 01635 43933 to learn more.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is offering a range of courses for volunteers, trustees, and anyone in the charity sector. Too see what courses it’s offering and to book a place, click here.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people? Please see here for more details.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Draft Parking Review On Street Order Amendment (REF0034IM) – deadline 13 September 2024.
West Berkshire Bus Service Survey 2024 – deadline extended to 29 September 2024.
Argyle Rd, Hampton Rd and Derby Rd, Newbury: Proposed 20mph speed limit by Traffic Regulation Order (Ref: 9529) – deadline 3 October 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 5 September 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes repairs, stitching, bats, a bronze medal, business development and flu jabs – plus Educafé’s back with a blast, plastic-free Newbury, a look at the autumnal Hamstead Hornet, another chance to see some questions worth asking in Enborne and Newbury Show is almost upon us. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Educafe and Community Cricket Family Fun Day. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Educafe is coming back with a blast

• After its summer break, the buzzing weekly Educafe Community Cafe will be returning to Newbury Library next Wednesday 11 September with the popular Parent Village weekly programme of experts, Chatty Corner for non-native English speakers to develop their language confidence, Knit and Natter table and board games in the cafe.

There will also be a new Cost of Living Community Cafe offering free advice on household bills, budgeting, and debt management, benefit eligibility and more. This initiative is part of the government-funded Multiply programme, designed to help individuals enhance their budgeting and money management skills. Whatever financial challenges you may be facing, there’s no need to navigate them alone. The first date is Wednesday 11 September from 11am to 2pm at Newbury Library.

There is also Seated Wellbeing in the Carnegie Room after the cafe has finished, from 2.15pm to 2.45pm with a variety of wellbeing experts including yoga teachers, personal trainers and physios who ensure you’ll learn and enjoy yourself at the same time.

Educafe also offers local businesses the opportunity to ‘Become a Local Changemaker’ and join them in transforming lives in West Berkshire and fostering an inclusive community by supporting parents, newcomers, and older adults. For just £100, your business can help create a thriving, connected community. You can contribute through financial donations, event sponsorships, or in-kind services. Every bit helps. Learn more and donate here.

Nikki Coome, Chair of Eco Friends (West Berkshire) is pleased to announce that Newbury has joined Thatcham in being awarded Plastic Free Community Status by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), in recognition of the work it has done to reduce the impact of single-use plastic. This means that Newbury has joined a network of communities across the UK who are leading the way to tackle throw away plastic at source.

Registering with the SAS Plastic Free Communities movement, EcoFriends (West Berkshire) pulled together key organisations and businesses in the town to put in place a five-point plan. The objectives include setting up a community led steering group, instigating the SAS Plastic Free Schools education programme, getting local council commitment and working with local businesses, organisations and community groups to spread the word and minimise the amount of disposable plastics they use.

‘’This such an exciting step for Newbury,” says Nikki. “Reducing our single use plastics not only helps the environment but also our carbon footprint (creating and recycling plastics) that we don’t really need, but have become a habit.  Thank you to every business, community group and council member that has helped us all achieve this award.  I can’t wait to take single use plastic reduction to the next level.’’

To find out more visit their website eco-friends.org.uk, email plasticfree@eco-friends.org.uk or join their facebook group: ecofriendswb

• Hamstead’s Hornet

You can click here to see the September 2024 issue of the Hamstead Hornet, covering life in Hamstead Marshall.

This issue includes first aid, fire in the park, the Garden Society, open day at Good Hope Farm, the harvest supper, bonfire night, the ptoblem of local (and missing) names, planning applications, property and what’s on in the village.

• Enborne’s showmens’ questions again

I’ve had no response from West Berkshire Council to the questions I first posed about a month ago, so I am publicly asking them again. I also repeat my suggestion that anyone in Enborne who is concerned about the matter might like to ask similar questions. The details of the three ward members can be found here – click on the option at the top to search by ward.

“I’m writing to you about application 23/02596/FULMAJ for ‘use of land for the siting of up to 24 travelling showpersons’ plots’ in Enborne. I’ve covered this in the past and expect to do so again.

• Other news

• Good news, the essential carriageway repairs along Bartholomew Street/Bridge Street/Mansion House, Newbury have now been completed, a week ahead of schedule. The road is now open for all to use.

• Calling local fabric lovers and sewing bees – this year’s Newbury Stitch Fair & Sewing Workshops is coming soon to The Kennet Centre in Newbury on Tuesday 17 to Wednesday 18 September. Don’t miss the great fabric bargains and book some great workshops including Sew a Stretch Knit Top or an Infinity Scarf, Classic Camisole or Cosmetic Caddy with Wendy Gardiner. You can also learn Indian Block Printing with Marion Scott-Baker. See all details here.

• Congratulations to the local Swings & Smiles charity that supports children with special needs and their families on their 10th birthday which they are celebrating this Saturday 7 September.  Next time you stop by at the Newbury Tesco Extra, please vote for Swings & Smiles by dropping off your blue token given at the checkout in the collection box – so they can receive grant funding from Tesco. They also welcome donations especially at this time as part of their Escalator Challenge with Greenham Trust which means that if they raise £10,000, the trust will give them a further £30,000. You can donate here for their latest fundraiser which will be added to the pot: swings-smiles-sponsored-walk.

• Congratulations also to Tim Jeffery from Newbury for winning a bronze medal in Shooting at the Paralympics.

• Are you interested in starting your own business? You can sign up for free business development workshops from 24 September to 2 October at Corn Exchange Newbury. The workshops are open to adults aged 19+ who live, work or volunteer in West Berkshire. They focus on: marketing, online presence, legal stuff and networking. To learn more and enrol on a course click here. The West Berkshire’s Community Learning team is supporting The Rebel School to deliver the workshops.

• Last chance to have your say on West Berkshire Council’s bus services, specifically on ticketing improvements over the past year, known as £2 National Single Fare Cap Scheme, as well as other schemes like the West Berkshire Community Connect. You have until 8 September to make your views known here.

• West Berkshire Council’s next Community Forum will focus on “The Planning Process in West Berkshire” on Tuesday 10 September, 6pm, at the Henwick Rugby Club (or via Zoom). Topics include updates on planning changes, digital services, and environmental considerations. Residents can discuss planning proposals and issues impacting local neighbourhoods. Click here for more information, those wishing to attend must register in advance.

• A reminder that applications for The Greenham Trust Charity Awards close on Friday 13 September. Apply for your charity or nominate an individual, trustee, fundraiser, or volunteer who you think has positively impacted our community. The awards ceremony will take place on Thursday 7 November at the Corn Exchange, Newbury. Click here to learn more.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. Also see West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• Quick reminder that unwanted or broken bikes can be taken to Newbury Community Project/Community Resource Centre who will fix them up and sell them on, with proceeds going to volunteering and training opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged adults and young people in the local community. Get in touch at enquiries@cfpnewbury.org or call 01635 43933 to learn more.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is offering a range of courses for volunteers, trustees, and anyone in the charity sector. Too see what courses it’s offering and to book a place, click here.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people? Please see here for more details.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

West Berkshire Bus Service Survey 2024 – deadline 8 September 2024.
Draft West Berkshire Statement of Gambling Principles 2025-2028 – deadline 12 September 2024.
Draft Parking Review On Street Order Amendment (REF0034IM) – deadline 13 September 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 29 August 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes DJs, plaques, olympics, trees, bus services, roadworks and gigs – plus some vague but hopefully ultimately promising news about Phoenix Court, a pause with the solar panels, a fourth question worth asking about Enborne’s travelling showmen’s application and Newbury Show draws closer. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include free family festival in Victoria Park and Swings & Smiles Olympics. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• A pause with the panels

I was looking at an article on the BBC website about a 443MW wind-energy scheme in the Shetlands which is set to provide a community benefit fund. This made me wonder how matters were progressing with the rather more modest 3MW solar farm in Enborne, planning permission for which was finally secured earlier this year.

Discussions are continuing between the applicants, Calleva Community Energy, and others about several aspects of the problem, including the likely start date for the work and the nature of the community benefit fund. The main hold-up is with agreeing a suitable connection to the grid and the timing for this. I was shocked to learn that it’s not uncommon for such schemes to be given a connection date 10 years hence. As planning permissions lapse if work isn’s started within three years, this can make projects impossible to do. This speaks of a moribund system or a long period of under-investment, and probably both. The new government has promised to address this. It will certainly need to if net zero by 2030 or any other specified date isn’t just going to be more political hot air.

Further information will be available at a public meeting at 7pm on Monday 21 September at the Enborne Cricket Club, which all residents are welcome to attend. Calleva will provide an update on progress and answer any questions people have. A statement should be available shortly afterwards. In the mean time, all eyes are on Whitehall to see if matters can be speeded up for all such projects. The planning system is often tortuously slow, but this can be defended by the fact that a decision, often of some importance, needs to be taken. Once that’s happened, it’s beyond pathetic that the system should create an even longer delay before it can become a reality.

• Enborne’s fourth question

As mentioned in previous weeks, I have posed some questions to the three West Berkshire Council ward members who represent Enborne concerning the application for the travelling showpersons’ site. Another aspect of the issue was recently pointed out to me which has led to my posing a fourth question. You can read the full email, duly amended, below.

I also repeat my suggestion that anyone in Enborne who is concerned about the matter might like to ask similar questions. The details of the three ward members can be found here – click on the option at the top to search by ward.

“I’m writing to you about application 23/02596/FULMAJ for ‘use of land for the siting of up to 24 travelling showpersons’ plots’ in Enborne. I’ve covered this in the past and expect to do so again.

• Phoenix Court

The Planning Inspector’s report and the government’s announcement of new housing targets have had the same effect as the introduction of a couple of foxes into a hen coop at West Berkshire Council. Once this furore dies down, one matter that will remain to be solved – and which will actually help WBC achieve its higher target – concerns the wretched joint venture between the Council and Sovereign Housing to convert two derelict sites (Chestnut Walk in Hungerford and Phoenix Court in Newbury) into social-rent homes.

The complete lack of any positive results from this are, or should be, an embarrassment to both parties. Questions about how matters were allowed to drift so badly will doubtless come: what really matters now is trying to salvage something.

As I suggested before, there seem to be three choices. Doing nothing and hoping that the JV will fix itself seems pointless. Winding it up and selling off the sites to the highest commercial bidder would be easy and would eventually help WBC’s housing figures (though not for affordable homes) but would highlight what a colossal waste of time and effort the partnership has been. Given that the district badly needs social-rent homes, it would also be a massive missed opportunity.

It appears that a third option, that of finding another partner and trying again, is actively being considered. This really should have happened at least a year ago, but nothing about this project has proceeded either quickly or smoothly. Let’s hope there’ll be something positive to report before too long.

• Countdown to showtime

The weekend edges closer and the countdown is underway for the Newbury Show on 21 and 22 September 2024. Click here for more information, including on stalls, tickets and sponsorship opportunities.

The above post looks at some of the attractions in the main arena, over the two days of the event including hunts, hounds, heavy horses, machinery old and new, livestock, scurry driving, mounted games and a hot-air balloon display.

• Other news

• This Saturday 31 August the Good Vibes Music Academy presents Sub Machine Festival, a free, fun, family-friendly festival of DJ music in Victoria Park. From 12noon until 8pm, there will be a range of great summer sounds and music ranging from Reggae to DNB. Come along and enjoy the good music, good fun and good vibes. See here for more details.

• This weekend it’s the Swings & Smiles Olympics, taking place at David Lloyd Newbury. The event is open to everyone whether you are a member or not. On Saturday 31 August and Sunday 1 September there will be fun Olympic-themed activities for both children and adults to enjoy. See the full scheduled activities on their website.

• Residents from Newbury, Thatcham, Hungerford, and across the district are invited to share their views on proposed changes to on-street parking rules. The proposed changes include adjustments to on-street parking fees and updates to the days and hours these charges will apply. The aim of these changes is to standardise parking charges across the district and generate income to support the upkeep and enforcement of parking regulations, helping to boost the local economy. To take part, please complete this survey by midnight on Friday 13 September 2024.

• This week, Newbury officially unveiled its 19th Blue Plaque, commemorating The Plaza. Built in 1925 and demolished in 1984, over the years The Plaza functioned as a theatre, cinema and dance hall, hosting many well-know bands. Its former site in the Market Place, now occupied by Bill’s restaurant, hosts the plaque. For more information click here.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the Public Health Annual Report, GCSE results, Heritage Open Days, local bus services and more. Read it here.

• West Berkshire Council needs your views on the bus services it offers, specifically on ticketing improvements over the past year, known as £2 National Single Fare Cap Scheme, as well as other schemes like the West Berkshire Community Connect. You have until 8 September to make your views known here.

• West Berkshire Council’s next Community Forum will focus on “The Planning Process in West Berkshire” on Tuesday 10 September, 6pm, at the Henwick Rugby Club (or via Zoom). Topics include updates on planning changes, digital services, and environmental considerations. Residents can discuss planning proposals and issues impacting local neighbourhoods. Click here for more information, those wishing to attend must register in advance.

• There is still time for local organisations to apply for £200,000 of crime-prevention funding. The Community Fund, jointly managed by the Police and Crime Commissioner and the Chief Constable, aims to help to prevent crime and keep communities safe. Applications close on Monday 9 September at 12noon. For further information about how to apply, click here.

• A reminder that applications for The Greenham Trust Charity Awards close on Friday 13 September. Apply for your charity or nominate an individual, trustee, fundraiser, or volunteer who you think has positively impacted our community. The awards ceremony will take place on Thursday 7 November at the Corn Exchange, Newbury. Click here to learn more.

• September is once again approaching and that means it is the time of year for Heritage Open Days. This annual event is England’s largest festival of history and culture. So far, West Berkshire Museum and Shaw House have both announced their respective open days. The Council has several other events coming up over September and October, which can be found here.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. Also see West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• For inspiration regarding family and children’s activities this summer holiday see our Local Summer Holiday Guide for days out, family activities, summer camps, fun for free and some great recipes to enjoy making at home.

• Quick reminder that unwanted or broken bikes can be taken to Newbury Community Project/Community Resource Centre who will fix them up and sell them on, with proceeds going to volunteering and training opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged adults and young people in the local community. Get in touch at enquiries@cfpnewbury.org or call 01635 43933 to learn more.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is offering a range of courses for volunteers, trustees, and anyone in the charity sector. Too see what courses it’s offering and to book a place, click here.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people? Please see here for more details.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Replacement of Racecourse Road (Stroud Green) poplar trees – deadline 1 September 2024.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Local Offer User Voice Survey – deadline 1 September 2024.
West Berkshire Bus Service Survey 2024 – deadline 8 September 2024.
Draft West Berkshire Statement of Gambling Principles 2025-2028 – deadline 12 September 2024.
Draft Parking Review On Street Order Amendment (REF0034IM) – deadline 13 September 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 22 August 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes music in the park, more trees, heritage open days, colouring in and another blue plaque – plus football returns at last, block replacement in Bartholomew Street, rail news, the countdown to Newbury Show and three (formerly two) questions that we feel are worth asking about the Showmen’s application in Enborne. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Art on the Park & OTTOPIA family adventure at The Base Greenham. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Home at last

Over six years after the ground was closed, Newbury FC is finally set to return to its Faraday Road home. The sad and tangled story of events since June 2018 has been referred to many times in this column. There are still some issues that remain to be resolved, but the good news for now is that football is back. This is a double celebration for the club as it was recently promoted to the Thames Valley Premier League.

“We have been committed to revitalise this local ground and have procured portable changing facilities for teams and officials, alongside a portable Clubhouse and toilet facilities where the former clubhouse stood,” a recent statement from West Berkshire Council said.

“Coaches and players will also benefit from new dugouts and floodlights have been secured for evening training sessions. A portable spectator stand will be added shortly, ensuring fans can enjoy matches comfortably.

“These facilities have been designed with the future in mind – they’re fully portable and can be repurposed at different locations within the district as we work towards adding more permanent structures in the future. Over the summer, significant work to the playing surface on the pitch will take place to ensure it’s in top condition for the upcoming matches.”

As for the medium-term future, much will depend on the conclusions of a consultation into the feasibility and design of a proposed 3G pitch. As I mentioned last month, if this is satisfactory, if WBC decides to proceed and if the grants can be secured, this will have the effect of safeguarding football at the venue for the foreseeable future. No grant donor (such as the Football Foundation) will come up with any cash without a cast-iron guarantee of at least 20 years continuous use of the facility.

This will therefore be make-your-mind-up time for WBC. The two previous administrations were hypnotised to an unhealthy and unprofitable extent by the possibility of developing the ground for residential or commercial use, none of which schemes came remotely close to being achieved. A 3G pitch – which would also address a glaring deficit in Newbury’s current roster of sporting facilities – would put paid to this vision. Such developments can happen in many places but there are far fewer places for a proper football pitch. Hats off to all those, in particular the indefatigable Newbury Community Football group, for keeping the campaign going and getting the result that the town deserves.

• A broad location for growth

West Berkshire Council has, in response to changes demanded by the Planning Inspector, rapidly been forced to identify some new sites to cover the shortfall about 850 homes over the lifetime of the local plan. About half of these would come from a rather nebulous proposal in north Newbury, specially “Land at Long Lane, north of Highwood Close and Shaw Cemetery (CA15); and land north of Newbury (SCD4)”. The document adds that “the area to the north of Newbury has been identified as a broad location for growth”.

We take a closer look at this issue, and the larger one that’s looming with a more than doubling of the overall housing targets, in This Week with Brian for 22 August (see West Berkshire’s target: part one and West Berkshire’s target: part two).

• How do you think nuisance complaints should be handled?

• Other news

• Victoria Park is the place to be this Sunday 25 August with Woodley Concert Band at 3pm and Art on the Park from 10am which showcases the work of local artists and crafts people, some of which will be available to buy. To see the schedule of dates and times, click here.

• Due to increased availability, Greenham Trust is delighted to extend its application deadline for free trees and hedging plants to Monday 9 September. Local schools, councils or charitable organisations can go to greenhamtrust.com/trees and complete an application form. The trees and hedging plants will be indigenous to the UK and supplied bare rooted in the late Autumn, with spirals and canes.

• West Berkshire Council’s next Community Forum will focus on “The Planning Process in West Berkshire”. Topics include updates on planning changes, digital services, and environmental considerations. This is an opportunity for residents to discuss planning proposals and issues impacting local neighbourhoods. This will be taking place on Tuesday 10 September at 6pm, at the Henwick Rugby Club in Thatcham (or via Zoom). Questions must be submitted by midday on Friday 6 September. Click here for more information, those wishing to attend, whether in person or online, must register in advance.

• A reminder that applications for The Greenham Trust Charity Awards close on Friday 13 September. Apply for your charity or nominate an individual, trustee, fundraiser, or volunteer who you think has positively impacted our community. The awards ceremony will take place on Thursday 7 November at the Corn Exchange, Newbury. Click here to learn more.

• September is once again approaching and that means it is the time of year for Heritage Open Days. This annual event is England’s largest festival of history and culture. So far, West Berkshire Museum and Shaw House have both announced their respective open days. The Council has several other events coming up over September and October, which can be found here.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers potential new housing sites for the Local Plan, updates from the fostering team, electoral registration, the return of Newbury Football Club and more. Read it here.

• Quick reminder that the entry deadline for the Mayor of Newbury’s colouring-in competition is Friday 30 August. Details can be found here.

• On Wednesday 28 August Newbury will be unveiling its 19th Blue Plaque, commemorating The Plaza. Built in 1925, over the years The Plaza functioned as a theatre, cinema and dance hall, hosting many well-know bands. It was demolished in 1984 but is still well remembered by many Newbury residents. Its former site in the Market Place is now occupied by Bill’s restaurant, which has agreed to host the plaque. For more information click here.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. Also see West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• For inspiration regarding family and children’s activities this summer holiday see our Local Summer Holiday Guide for days out, family activities, summer camps, fun for free and some great recipes to enjoy making at home.

• Quick reminder that unwanted or broken bikes can be taken to Newbury Community Project/Community Resource Centre who will fix them up and sell them on, with proceeds going to volunteering and training opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged adults and young people in the local community. Get in touch at enquiries@cfpnewbury.org or call 01635 43933 to learn more.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is offering a range of courses for volunteers, trustees, and anyone in the charity sector. Too see what courses it’s offering and to book a place, click here.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people? Please see here for more details.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Draft Nuisance Policy 2024-2027 – deadline 26 August 2024.
Replacement of Racecourse Road (Stroud Green) poplar trees – deadline 1 September 2024.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Local Offer User Voice Survey – deadline 1 September 2024.
West Berkshire Bus Service Survey 2024 – deadline 8 September 2024.
Draft West Berkshire Statement of Gambling Principles 2025-2028 – deadline 12 September 2024.
Draft Parking Review On Street Order Amendment (REF0034IM) – deadline 13 September 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 15 August 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes repairs, yoga, colouring, bowls, bees and capital funding – plus a reminder about two questions that you might like to ask your ward members regarding the Enborne showmen’s application and a clarifying map of Newbury’s newest road. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Rathayatra Festival and Repair Café. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Question time

Last week (see below), I reproduced some questions which I’ve asked West Berkshire Council that seem to me to be relevant considerations if the application in Enborne for the travelling showpersons’ site is approved. This is based on the experience in Micheldever near Winchester, where a similar approval about 20 years ago produced exactly the different results that people in Enborne fear might happen there. On 5 August, the following was sent to the three ward members for Hungerford & Kintbury, which I reproduce below.

“I’m writing to you about application 23/02596/FULMAJ for ‘use of land for the siting of up to 24 travelling showpersons’ plots’ in Enborne. I’ve covered this in the past and expect to do so again.

“I’m not writing to express an opinion on the robustness of the three needs assessments nor on the merits of the application, though others will have done so. My questions concern what happens if the application is passed when it eventually comes before the Western Area Planning Committee (WAPC).

“The possibility of an approval for travelling showpersons (TSPs) being used to create a travellers’ site is not hypothetical: exactly this happened in Micheldever (under Winchester City Council). Attempts at enforcement were protracted, divisive and costly and produced a result other than what the original decision intended. It seems this was not helped by changing and perhaps subjective definitions of TSPs.

“This example suggests that the enforcement system is not a perfect way of protecting the planning authority’s decision on such matters. Many Enborne residents are concerned that the (far larger) application there could have the same result. Given the likely costs and reputational damage, I imagine WBC is concerned about this as well.

“I therefore have two questions:

1. Has WBC considered what a ‘bad’ outcome from a TSP site (such as Micheldever) and a ‘good’ one (such as I believe exists in Hook) look like? How can Enborne’s, if approved, follow the latter route?
2. Has WBC considered what other legal agreements, or measures such as covenants, warranties, bonds, formal definitions of a TSP, can be used to give both precision and certainty to WBC’s decision and conditions?

“If the matter comes before WAPC and if it’s approved, members will not have a lot of time to consider such options on the day. I’d therefore like to know – as would Enborne’s residents – what thought has been given to this in advance. To do this now would not, I suggest, pre-judge the committee’s decision but merely provide it with sufficient tools to make whatever it decides stick.”

My email has been acknowledged but I’ve yet to receive any other response. I chased this again on 15 August. I repeated my suggestion that anyone in Enborne who is concerned about the matter might like to ask similar questions. The details of the three ward members can be found here – click on the option at the top to search by ward.

As regards when this application will come before the WAPC,  that will almost certainly be after the Planning Inspector has made is report into the local plan, including the validity of the planning policy on which this matter largely turns. It’s not known when this will happen but it could be within the month. Time is thus of the essence in ensuring that what the committee decides can be given adequate protection.

• A new road

We mentioned last week about a new road link called Hectors Way, “a significant infrastructure achievement as part of the Sterling Gardens development in Newbury. This new road offers a two-way link between the A339 and Hambridge Road, providing a vital alternative route to Mill Lane and most of Kings Road.”

I’m pleased to say that, following my suggestion, this press statement has been re-issued with a map added. Previously it was not at all clear where this new road was.

The text under the map (which makes a lot more sense when you have the map in front of you) reads as follows:

“Kings Road Link Road/Hectors Way has opened (green line), and this is now the main route for traffic. The existing one-way section of Kings Road (red line) is no longer the primary westbound route and drivers should now use the new link road to travel Westbound. The timings of the Traffic Signals at Kings Road/Hectors Way have been changed to reflect this so there is less green time for traffic on this arm. The quickest way towards Newbury will be via the new link road and motorists using the one-way section will likely experience delays. In addition, Eastbound traffic should use the new Hectors Way (blue line) and not Mill Lane.”

The reason I quote this is because it makes a number of suppositions about driver behaviour which might not immediately work out as the highways team might wish. As the main discouragement seems to come from changing the phasing of the lights at Kings Road/Hectors Way, this might take a bit of time to filter through and alter our mental route planning. In the meantime, there may be a number of concerns that the signs are in the wrong place or whatever, but these could due more to unfamiliarity than municipal error. If, however, you feel that there’s a genuine problem (such as a specified planning condition not having been met) I’d suggest you contact one of the three ward members for Newbury Greenham. You can find their details here.

• Other news

• This weekend it’s the Rathayatra Festival, taking place at Victoria Park, Newbury, a free family yoga event. Taking place from 12noon until 5pm, there will be lots of fun things to do including different types of yoga, live mantra music, a chariot procession, a magic show, a dance show, henna tattoos, face-painting, stalls selling gifts and more. Plus from 2pm there will be a free vegetarian feast in the food tent. To learn more click here or get in contact at info@mantravibes.org.

• This month’s Newbury & Thatcham Repair Café is this Sunday 18 August from 2pm to 4.30pm at Newbury Methodist Church Hall. Take along something that needs fixing by the talented volunteers. But if you can’t make this date, the next one is on Sunday 29 September at the Frank Hutchings Community Hall in Thatcham from 10am to 12.30pm. For more details see Newbury & Thatcham Repair Cafe. So far NTRC has saved 700kg of stuff from ending up in landfill and also taught a lot of visitors how to repair their own items.

• Also this Sunday 18 August West Berkshire Therapy Centre staff and volunteers will be taking on the Newbury Bowling Club’s top players in a fundraising bowls event at 2pm at The Bowling Club in Victoria Park. The two groups will be taking up a series of fun and games antics, and later with some light refreshments. Members of the public are invited to come watch the fun, and help raise money for the therapy centre which benefits disabled people from the local community.

• The Mayor of Newbury has announced a fun colouring-in competition, to inspire creativity and help a good cause. The competition is open to all children under 16 and the winner will receive a £20 book token, just in time for the new school term. The Mayor will personally select the winning artwork. The colouring worksheet can be collected from the Town Hall. Entries must be returned to the Town Hall, with a small entry fee of £1, which will be donated to the Mayor’s chosen Charity, West Berks Foodbank. The deadline for entries is Friday 30 August. Details can be found here.

• West Berkshire Council is allocating a further £500k of capital funding for community groups, Town and Parish Councils and organisations wanting to deliver infrastructure to benefit residents and local businesses. Bids are open until 5pm on 16 September. To date, the Council have approved over £1 million in community grants ranging from £10k to £100k, for purposes which includes the renovation of village halls, scout huts and improvements to sports and playground facilities. For more information click here.

• Ever wanted to learn more about beekeeping? Ben’s Berkshire Bees are holding a free Beekeeping Workshop, at Shaw House on Thursday 22 August at 6:30pm. The event is free but booking a place is essential. To do so please contact amy.bosley1@westberks.gov.uk.

• On Wednesday 28 August Newbury will be unveiling its 19th Blue Plaque, commemorating The Plaza. Built in 1925, over the years The Plaza functioned as a theatre, cinema and dance hall, hosting many well-know bands. It was demolished in 1984 but is still well remembered by many Newbury residents. Its former site in the Market Place is now occupied by Bill’s restaurant, which has agreed to host the plaque. For more information click here.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the Armed Forces Covenant, the update to the Local Plan, September’s Heritage Open Days and more. Read it here.

• The roadworks along Bartholomew Street/Bridge Street/Mansion House have now moved into stage two of the planned work. In part two, Bartholomew Street is closed at the junction with Market Street for the duration of the works, access will be maintained for businesses and the Kennet Centre Car Park. Access for emergency vehicles will be unavailable through the works site until its completion on Saturday 7  September. More information can be found here.

• Events at Victoria Park this August include the Hebborns Funfair until 18 August, the Rathayatra Festival, Art on the Park, as well as various musical performances at the Bandstand from the Ramsbury Silver Band, the South Berks Concert Band and the Woodley Concert Band. To see the schedule of dates and times, click here.

• West Berkshire Libraries August newsletter details the fun activates that are taking place over the holidays and beyond. From the Reading Challenge, to the new children’s library app, Lego, coding, Anglo-Saxons, Ageing Creatively, the Mobile Library and more. There are activities suitable for all ages. To see the full list, see here.

• Quick reminder about West Berkshire Council’s consultation on what type of trees you would like to see replace the felled Italian Poplar trees on Stroud Green, Racecourse Road. To learn more and have your say, click here to take part in the survey, by ranking your preferences in order. The consultation closes on 1 September and a final decision will be made in October.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. Also see West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• What would be the impact on you if Royal Berkshire Hospital moved? The two potential sites are: Thames Valley Park (at the end of A329M) and Thames Valley Science Park (off the M4 near Shinfield). Please fill in this survey to have your say or email bbt@royalberkshire.nhs.uk with your feedback.

• For inspiration regarding family and children’s activities this summer holiday see our Local Summer Holiday Guide for days out, family activities, summer camps, fun for free and some great recipes to enjoy making at home.

• West Berkshire Council wants feedback on its SEND Local Offer website, which includes information about the services available for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in West Berkshire. Have your say on the website and how easily you can find the information by participating in the survey here. For more surveys to participate in see the Have Your Say section below.

• Veolia’s Sustainability Fund is back and offering up to £1,000 worth of funding to help support people across West Berkshire to improve the environment. Non-profit organisations, community groups or individuals can apply here to help transform their local community through green projects. Applications close Monday 30 September.

• Quick reminder that unwanted or broken bikes can be taken to Newbury Community Project/Community Resource Centre who will fix them up and sell them on, with proceeds going to volunteering and training opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged adults and young people in the local community. Get in touch at enquiries@cfpnewbury.org or call 01635 43933 to learn more.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is offering a range of courses for volunteers, trustees, and anyone in the charity sector. Too see what courses it’s offering and to book a place, click here.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people? Please see here for more details.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Draft Nuisance Policy 2024-2027 – deadline 19 August 2024.
Replacement of Racecourse Road (Stroud Green) poplar trees – deadline 1 September 2024.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Local Offer User Voice Survey – deadline 1 September 2024.
West Berkshire Bus Service Survey 2024 – deadline 8 September 2024.
Draft West Berkshire Statement of Gambling Principles 2025-2028 – deadline 12 September 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 8 August 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes a funfair, trees, anthems, bowls, roadworks, libraries and bikes – plus two questions posed to West Berkshire Council about an application in Enborne, 10 years of 101, the latest on Newbury Show and an immersive monochrome event at Greenham. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include live rock and OTTOPIA. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Two questions in Enborne

Last week (see below), I returned to the complex matter of the proposed travelling show persons’ site in Enborne. I looked at a case not far away in Micheldever where just such a site allocation had been turned into something else far less to the liking of local residents and the planning authority. It seemed to me that, without suitable precautions, there was no reason why this should not be repeated in Enborne were the application to be approved, and even if the current owner has no plans to turn this into anything different, as he has maintained.

On 5 August, I therefore wrote the following letter to the three ward members for Hungerford & Kintbury which I reproduce below.

“I’m writing to you about application 23/02596/FULMAJ for ‘use of land for the siting of up to 24 travelling showpersons’ plots’ in Enborne. I’ve covered this in the past and expect to do so again.

“I’m not writing to express an opinion on the robustness of the three needs assessments nor on the merits of the application, though others will have done so. My questions concern what happens if the application is passed when it eventually comes before the Western Area Planning Committee (WAPC).

“The possibility of an approval for travelling showpersons (TSPs) being used to create a travellers’ site is not hypothetical: exactly this happened in Micheldever (under Winchester City Council). Attempts at enforcement were protracted, divisive and costly and produced a result other than what the original decision intended. It seems this was not helped by changing and perhaps subjective definitions of TSPs.

“This example suggests that the enforcement system is not a perfect way of protecting the planning authority’s decision on such matters. Many Enborne residents are concerned that the (far larger) application there could have the same result. Given the likely costs and reputational damage, I imagine WBC is concerned about this as well.

“I therefore have two questions:

1. Has WBC considered what a ‘bad’ outcome from a TSP site (such as Micheldever) and a ‘good’ one (such as I believe exists in Hook) look like? How can Enborne’s, if approved, follow the latter route?
2. Has WBC considered what other legal agreements, or measures such as covenants, warranties, bonds, formal definitions of a TSP, can be used to give both precision and certainty to WBC’s decision and conditions?

“If the matter comes before WAPC and if it’s approved, members will not have a lot of time to consider such options on the day. I’d therefore like to know – as would Enborne’s residents – what thought has been given to this in advance. To do this now would not, I suggest, pre-judge the committee’s decision but merely provide it with sufficient tools to make whatever it decides stick.”

My email has been acknowledged and I look forward to receiving a response soon. Hopefully this will provide some reassurance to local residents.

I would further suggest that anyone in Enborne who is concerned about the matter might like to ask similar questions. The details of the three ward members can be found here – click on the option at the top to search by ward.

• The latest from Newbury Show

Launching into the air with spectacular style at the Newbury Show this September, the Extreme Bike Battle fuses multiple disciplines together for the ultimate adrenaline fuelled show. The event promises jaw-dropping stunts as these world-class performers push their limits to perform an amazing spectacle.

Click here for information on tickets for the show, with advance-sale discounts still available.

Sponsorship opportunities are also still available, providing the ultimate marketing opportunity for your brand. This is your opportunity to reach a captive audience of over 33,000 people in just two days by partnering with one of the biggest outdoor celebrations attracting visitors from across the country.

For more information, please click here.

• 10 years of 101

National centre for arts in public space, artistic creation centre and sector leader in innovative outdoor arts, the Corn Exchange’s 101 Outdoor Arts based at Greenham Business Park is celebrating 10 years of excellence this year.

Simon Chatterton, founder of 101 Outdoor Arts and Strategic Lead comments: “Ten years of 101 provides an opportunity to look back at our achievements over that time and celebrate the work of the artists we have supported. Even more importantly though, we want to use this moment to bring our sector together to look forward at how outdoor arts can continue to flourish over the next decade. The arts are central to our quality of life, and outdoor arts can play a unique role in celebrating our cities and countryside and bringing culture to people who would never step inside a theatre or gallery.”

101 works with thousands of local participants and volunteers and community groups across Newbury, involving them in creative outdoor arts projects. With the support of Arts Council England and Greenham Trust, 101 Outdoor Arts has also become a world-renowned centre for artist development, hosting hundreds of artists each year to create their performances and take advantage of the centre’s unique facilities, which include residential accommodation and scenic fabrication facilities.

To celebrate its milestone decade, the venue is reprising its first production from 2013, Ablaze (13 to 15 September). This is a large-scale free outdoor production in Newbury which will attract up to 10,000, enchanting audiences with its mesmerising display of fire sculptures, transforming the canal and Victoria Park into a realm of flickering braziers and ingenious installations, captivating fire sculptures and live music. You can also explore the 101 rehearsal space and meet the team at the 101 Open Day on Tuesday 24 September.

• OTTOPIA

Thanks to PP reader Tina Hill for reviewing the new OTTOPIA summer holiday adventure experience at The Base in Greenham, a special immersive and interactive exhibition for families this summer which celebrates wildlife and art in an incredible black and white garden plush with giant flowers, trees, mushrooms and cacti.

“I really didn’t know what to expect but I thoroughly enjoyed OTTOPIA and the really good interactive games/puzzles. I was given a workbook, which you fill in as you go around and then claim your prizes. It really gets you thinking about how to complete the games. The kids really enjoyed it and were involved with the games.

“It was all self-explanatory and easy to follow, with otter facts around the exhibition as well as searching for colour letters to complete a quiz – they were really hard to find. From an artistic perspective it was interesting to look at how to use black/white to create an optical illusion. Highly recommended for all the family, there are children’s zones to do activities as well as heading out on Greenham Common to do the OTTOPIA trail.”

OTTOPIA is open daily until Thursday 29 August. Tickets can be bought here.

• Other news

• Events at Victoria Park this August include the Hebborns Funfair until 18 August, the Rathayatra Festival, Art on the Park, as well as various musical performances at the Bandstand from the Ramsbury Silver Band, the South Berks Concert Band and the Woodley Concert Band. To see the schedule of dates and times, click here.

• This Saturday 10 August you can also enjoy some golden era rock anthems from The Rokkits at the Bandstand, from 2pm until 5pm.

• West Berkshire Council has announced the opening of the new Kings Road link road called Hectors Way, a significant infrastructure achievement as part of the Sterling Gardens development in Newbury. This new road offers a two-way link between the A339 and Hambridge Road, providing a vital alternative route to Mill Lane and most of Kings Road.

• West Berkshire Libraries August newsletter details the fun activates that are taking place over the holidays and beyond. From the Reading Challenge, to the new children’s library app, Lego, coding, Anglo-Saxons, Ageing Creatively, the Mobile Library and more. There are activities suitable for all ages. To see the full list, see here.

• West Berkshire Therapy Centre staff and volunteers will be taking on the Newbury Bowling Club’s top players in a fundraising bowls event on Sunday 18 August. Newbury Bowling Club has challenged the Centre’s team to learn how to play bowls, provide them with one hour’s tuition, before taking up a series of fun and games antics not normally seen on the bowling green. Members of the public are invited to come watch the fun, which starts at 2pm at The Bowling Club in in Victoria Park, with some light refreshments towards the end of the afternoon. Come along for a fun afternoon in aid of the therapy centre which is very specialised gym, for the benefit of disabled people from the local community.

• Quick reminder about West Berkshire Council’s consultation on what type of trees you would like to see replace the felled Italian Poplar trees on Stroud Green, Racecourse Road. To learn more and have your say, click here to take part in the survey, by ranking your preferences in order. The consultation closes on 1 September and a final decision will be made in October.

• The Mary Hare School is looking for stall holders for its Christmas Market later this year. If you or someone you know would like to hold a stall please get in touch with Kiri-Lynn at k.gardner@maryhare.org.uk for more information and a booking form.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the Kennet Valley Primary School, garden waste subscriptions, road work improvements, the Environment Strategy, the new Kings Road link road, and more. Read it here.

• Quick reminder about the roadworks along Bartholomew Street/Bridge Street/Mansion House in Newbury until Saturday 7  September. Access for emergency vehicles will be unavailable through the works site and there is a signed alternative diversion route. In part one, there will be no through access from Northbrook Street for the first two weeks (12 August). In part two, Bartholomew Street will be closed at the junction with Market Street for the duration of the works, access will be maintained for businesses and the Kennet Centre Car Park. More information can be found here.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. Also see West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• Quick reminder about social event for anyone who is blind or visually impaired, Hungerford & Newbury Socialeyes at Hungerford British Legion on Wednesday 14 August from 2 to 4pm with entertainment and food. The event is free and transport can be provided from Newbury. For full information call 0118 987 2803 or click here.

• What would be the impact on you if Royal Berkshire Hospital moved? The two potential sites are: Thames Valley Park (at the end of A329M) and Thames Valley Science Park (off the M4 near Shinfield). Please fill in this survey to have your say or email bbt@royalberkshire.nhs.uk with your feedback.

• For inspiration regarding family and children’s activities this summer holiday see our Local Summer Holiday Guide for days out, family activities, summer camps, fun for free and some great recipes to enjoy making at home.

• The next Newbury & Thatcham Repair Cafe is on Sunday 18 August in Newbury Methodist Church Hall so you’ve got time to look out something that needs fixing. So far NTRC has saved 700kg of stuff from ending up in landfill and also taught a lot of visitors how to repair their own items. Huge congratulations to the Repair Cafe organisers.

• West Berkshire Council wants feedback on its SEND Local Offer website, which includes information about the services available for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in West Berkshire. Have your say on the website and how easily you can find the information by participating in the survey here. For more surveys to participate in see the Have Your Say section below.

• Veolia’s Sustainability Fund is back and offering up to £1,000 worth of funding to help support people across West Berkshire to improve the environment. Non-profit organisations, community groups or individuals can apply here to help transform their local community through green projects. Applications close Monday 30 September.

• Quick reminder that unwanted or broken bikes can be taken to Newbury Community Project/Community Resource Centre who will fix them up and sell them on, with proceeds going to volunteering and training opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged adults and young people in the local community. Get in touch at enquiries@cfpnewbury.org or call 01635 43933 to learn more.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is offering a range of courses for volunteers, trustees, and anyone in the charity sector. Too see what courses it’s offering and to book a place, click here.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people? Please see here for more details.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Argyle Road, Hampton Road and Derby Road, Newbury: Proposed 20mph speed limit – deadline 9 August 2024.
Draft Nuisance Policy 2024-2027 – deadline 19 August 2024.
Replacement of Racecourse Road (Stroud Green) poplar trees – deadline 1 September 2024.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Local Offer User Voice Survey – deadline 1 September 2024.
West Berkshire Bus Service Survey 2024 – deadline 8 September 2024.
Draft West Berkshire Statement of Gambling Principles 2025-2028 – deadline 12 September 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 1 August 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes a plan, a social, a bandstand, a café, music and letting off steam – plus another look at the issue of the travelling showmen in Enborne, ducks, lions & fireworks in Newbury, a statement from Basingstoke & Deane Council and a choice of foliage in Stroud Green. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Newbury Pride Social, Waterside Centre’s Third Birthday Party and brass at the bandstand. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• The travelling showmen

A few times over the last month or so, and particularly on 27 June (see below), I referred to application number 23/02596/FULMAJ being considered by WBC for “use of land for the siting of up to 24 travelling showpersons’ plots”. This has led to a good deal of local concern, centred on two main aspects.

The first is the needs assessment: is there, in short, a requirement for this allocation? All I can say is that three needs assessments were done, in 2017, 2109 and 2021, all of which established that a need did exist. Enborne Parish Council and others have their doubts about this.

In any event, the site allocation and associated policy for travelling showpersons there found its way into the local plan refresh and then into the draft local plan which has recently been through its independent examination by the Planning Inspector. Representations about this matter were made at the hearings and it’s now up to the Inspector to determine if the policies and allocations are sound.

If he does, these will become part of WBC’s planning bible and it’s hard to see anything short of a judicial review (which has not been ruled out) from shifting this. It will also mean that there’ll be no planning reason for refusing the application, if it accords with the policy and unless any other material considerations indicate otherwise, when in due course it comes before the Western Area Planning Committee.

If he doesn’t feel the policies are sound, we need to see what changes are recommended.

The other concern is that the application could be a Trojan horse, with the site later being used for other purposes such as a travellers’ site (the landowner Martin Burton has said that this was not his intention).

On 27 June I wrote: “It seems that the current allocation is quite clearly for travelling showmen. As I understand it, this is not an arbitrary term or a casual synonym for travellers, but describes a quite distinct and protected group working in a specific sector. If the site is sold – as anything might be – and the new owner wished to use this as a travellers’ site, all the normal permissions and requests for change of use would have to be sorted. We need to trust WBC’s planners to understand that there’s a difference between ‘travelling showmen’ and ‘travellers’ and not assume that any allocation can effortlessly be moved from one to the other.”

It has, however, since been pointed out to me that an example of exactly what I said could not, or should not, happen is currently playing out in Micheldever between Winchester and Basingstoke. Permissions for nine travelling showpersons were approved in 2003, but it was soon suspected that the site was being used for other purposes. Formal enforcement action by Winchester City Council (WCC) began in 2008 and the appeals and counter-appeals only reached a conclusion in April of this year.

This wasn’t entirely satisfactory for WCC. As reported in the Hampshire Chronicle, the Inspector’s decision “designated the site as a Gypsy and Traveller site instead of its original use as winter quarters for Travelling Showpeople,” the Inspector going on to add that “the council’s undisputed sizeable and immediate un-met and growing need for Gypsy and Traveller pitches, as manifested in the lack of available alternative sites and the lack of a five-year land supply, is so acute and pressing that it surpasses in importance the needs of the former.”

This is exactly what residents of Enborne (pop. c 700) fear may happen there. It’s worth noting that the Micheldever site was originally for nine showpersons’ plots, but this has now expanded to permit up to 89 caravans. The Enborne site is about two and half times larger: do the maths.

It seems therefore that I was wrong about this on 27 June. I’m not saying that this will happen in Enborne, but that it could. So – what can be done about it?

A WCC councillor I spoke to on 31 July suggested that this decision at least provided an opportunity to re-boot the relationship under these new terms which circumstances have forced WCC to accept. I understand that the landowners have until the end of September to come back with a proposed agreement regarding the site which can then be agreed between the parties. This will include conditions that need to be adhered to, which need to be clear, legal and reasonable. Bur can they be enforced?

On past evidence, possibly not. Planning enforcement and the related legal battles are long, costly and uncertain. Something more is needed. What might this be?

One possibility is some kind of warranty or covenant which restricts the use of the land for the specified purpose, perhaps with a sale to WBC at something based on agricultural prices if it’s breached. If the owner has no desire to change the use then he should have no problem in agreeing it, which would also bind any future owner. There may well be better ideas than that. However, clearly something stronger than the current planning enforcement system is needed for WBC to protect its reputation and position as a planning authority with teeth. Otherwise, what’s the point?

If WBC’s planners have not yet opened up a dialogue with their opposite numbers in Winchester then I suggest they should do so without delay. The clock is ticking and there may be only one chance to get this right.

• Watermill Bridge

Last week (see below) we mentioned about the Basingstoke and Deane Council’s failed attempt to overturn the granting on appeal of permission for a 270-home development at Wash Water, effectively in Newbury. We ran an understandably up-beat statement from the developers following the ruling.

We also asked B&D Council if it wanted to comment and earlier this week we received the following statement:

“The council is disappointed with the outcome of the challenge,” Cabinet Member for Planning and Infrastructure Andy Konieczko said. “This means the appeal decision, that overturns the council’s refusal of the planning application, stands and the development at Watermill Bridge is approved.

“Subsequent appeal decisions have confirmed that the Local Plan policies remain up to date and will protect sites that aren’t allocated in the plan from speculative development.”

I understand from Bewley that work on the project may start in the new year. When completed, the scheme will (if it follows its current plans) provide the Council with homes to set against its building target (which Angela Rayner’s recent announcement will almost certainly have increased); a better land-supply figure; around 100 affordable and social-rent homes to help reduce what is one of the longest council housing waiting list in the south east; and all the CIL money despite the fact that most of the residents will be making demands on the services not in B&D but in West Berkshire. All in all, I think this could have been a worse outcome for the Council.

• Ducks, lions and fireworks

Congratulations to Newbury Lions for its successful Duck Race last Sunday 28 July. “There were many more spectators than last year and all the ducks sold out by lunchtime,” former Newbury Lions President Margo Payne told us. “The artisan market brought more footfall into town and possibly the later date and warm weather made a difference. The race was originally scheduled for April but the water was running too fast and dangerous then.

“We would like to thank all the winners for donating their cash prizes back to Newbury Lions and Swing and Smiles, Lock, Stock and Barrel for sponsoring the prize money, Newbury Canoe for doing a great job on the water as duck marshals and Kennet Radio for providing a great atmosphere with an amusing commentary.”

The event made over £1,000 for Newbury Lions and the organisation is now looking forward to its Fabulous Fireworks night at Newbury Racecourse on Saturday 2 November.

• A choice of foliage

The 56 large mature Lombardy poplars on Stroud Green were planted around 1967, making the trees nearly 60 years old, which is much older than their expected lifespan of 30 to 40 years.

Three of the trees on Racecourse Road have already fallen in the last three years, one across Racecourse Road and two onto the Green. Following a detailed inspection of the trees in 2023, most of them had some level of decline and hollowing and six urgently needed to be felled. This was carried out in January 2024. Now the remaining 50 trees need to be felled to keep the public safe.

The felled trees will be replaced between November 2025 and February 2026 with slow-growing London plane trees which will reach a height of 35 meters and live for perhaps several hundred years. Valued for their ability to adapt to urban conditions and their resistance to pollution, they are widely planted as a street tree in towns and cities.

The London plane trees will eventually be the dominant trees, but while they are getting bigger, West Berkshire Council wants to plant a line of smaller, faster-growing trees alongside them, to provide interest, colour and more space for wildlife. WBC’s Countryside Service is asking local residents which species of smaller tree they would like. The choices are Lombardy poplars, Black pine or Cypress oak, or a more rounded tree like a small-leaved lime. Click here to have your say by 1 September.

• Other news

• West Berkshire Council needs to update its Local Plan, in the light of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner’s proposed new framework regarding housing and planning. Amongst many other changes, this introduces new mandatory housing targets for all local authorities in England. Under the new framework, many more homes will need to be delivered in West Berkshire than originally planned, more than doubling the current local housing-need figure. West Berkshire Councillor Denise Gaines described the news a “bombshell” and “a real blow to local democracy”. The Council will be responding in due course. Read more about this story here. See also the coverage of this in the 1 August This Week with Brian column.

• The next Newbury Pride social will be taking place this Friday 2 August at The Cross Keys Newbury, from 7:30pm. New faces are always welcome and if you are new and would like a committee member to meet you outside please send them a message and they would be more than happy to help. Details can be found here.

• This Sunday 4 August, come along to the Victoria Park Bandstand to listen to the sounds of Tadley Concert Brass, from 3pm to 5pm.

• Speen Community Café at The Starting Gate pub offers a friendship and fun every Wednesday afternoon from 2 to 4pm. Next Wednesday 7 August the mobile library is visiting from 3 to 4pm, there is sew and mend activity and the Samaritans will be popping in as well. The following week there won’t be a café because it has organised a trip to the seaside instead. How cool is that? Well done to the volunteer team that run the Café, led by the indefatigable Kerry Bird.

• Good news: work will begin soon at Shaw House to restore the historic gates which were destroyed in an unfortunate incident with a coach last year. The significant damage to the iron gates has been repaired at a local blacksmith and now the restoration work will begin on-site. In the meantime visitors can continue to use the main car park. Pedestrians and blue badge users can also continue to use the historic entrance whilst it’s being repaired. Shaw House will be giving updates via its Facebook page, if you would like to keep up-to-date.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Environmental Bulletin for July-August covers changes to single-use plastic rules, local bus services, waste and recycling, and more. Read it here.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the local plan, electric car charging, community grants, Royal Berkshire Hospital and more. Read it here.

• Quick reminder about the roadworks along Bartholomew Street/Bridge Street/Mansion House in Newbury until Saturday 7  September. Access for emergency vehicles will be unavailable through the works site and there is a signed alternative diversion route. In part one, there will be no through access from Northbrook Street for the first two weeks (12 August). In part two, Bartholomew Street will be closed at the junction with Market Street for the duration of the works, access will be maintained for businesses and the Kennet Centre Car Park. More information can be found here.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. Also see West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• The Newbury Music Centre recently announced it would be relocating from its hub at St Bartholomew’s School in Newbury and would also be acquiring  a new name. The newly named West Berkshire Music Centre will operate out of the Kennet School site — which the group has a long-standing relationship with. It will also be launching a Soundstage programme, which supports local musicians on their popular music journey. You can read more about this story here.

• Berkshire Vision sight loss charity provides a wide range of support services to anyone who is blind or visually impaired in Berkshire. Their programme of adapted sports and social activities for August includes Hungerford & Newbury Socialeyes at Hungerford British Legion on Wednesday 14 August from 2 to 4pm with entertainment and food. The event is free and transport can be provided from Newbury. For full information call 0118 987 2803 or click here.

• What would be the impact to you if Royal Berkshire Hospital moved? The two potential sites are: Thames Valley Park (at the end of A329M) and Thames Valley Science Park (off the M4 near Shinfield). Please fill in this survey to have your say or email bbt@royalberkshire.nhs.uk with your feedback.

• For inspiration regarding family and children’s activities this summer holiday see our Local Summer Holiday Guide for days out, family activities, summer camps, fun for free and some great recipes to enjoy making at home.

• The Base, Greenham is hosting a very special immersive and interactive exhibition for families this summer which celebrates wildlife and art. OTTOPIA runs from Tuesday 6 to Thursday 29 August when you can wander through OTTOPIA’s incredible black and white garden plush with giant flowers, trees, mushrooms and cacti. Packed with side-quests and interactive games, all curated to ensure an unforgettable experience for families and visitors of all ages. Throughout your time in OTTOPIA you’ll learn interesting, fun facts about otters and other British wildlif,e and you can even complete the “Champion spOTTER Quest” which will take you on a tour of The Base, hunting down black and white striped wildlife who have escaped OTTOPIA. Tickets can be bought here.

• The next Newbury & Thatcham Repair Cafe is on Sunday 18 August in Newbury Methodist Church Hall so you’ve got time to look out something that needs fixing. So far NTRC has saved 700kg of stuff from ending up in landfill and also taught a lot of visitors how to repair their own items. Huge congratulations to the Repair Cafe organisers.

• West Berkshire Council wants feedback on its SEND Local Offer website, which includes information about the services available for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in West Berkshire. Have your say on the website and how easily you can find the information by participating in the survey here. For more surveys to participate in see the Have Your Say section below.

• Ever wanted to learn more about bees or try your hand at beekeeping? Nature for Help and Ben’s Berkshire Bee are holding a free beekeeping workshop at Shaw House. The event will take place on Thursday 22 August and booking is essential due to limited places. To book get in touch at amy.bosley1@westberks.gov.uk.

• Veolia’s Sustainability Fund is back and offering up to £1,000 worth of funding to help support people across West Berkshire to improve the environment. Non-profit organisations, community groups or individuals can apply here to help transform their local community through green projects. Applications close Monday 30 September.

• Quick reminder that unwanted or broken bikes can be taken to Newbury Community Project/Community Resource Centre who will fix them up and sell them on and with proceeds going to volunteering and training opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged adults and young people in the local community. Get in touch with them at enquiries@cfpnewbury.org or call 01635 43933 to learn more.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area. Get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is offering a range of courses for volunteers, trustees, and anyone in the charity sector. Too see what courses it’s offering and to book a place, click here.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people? Please see here for more details.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Draft Parking Review of Off-Street Parking Places Amendment 13 (REF0013IM) – deadline 2 August 2024.
Argyle Road, Hampton Road and Derby Road, Newbury: Proposed 20mph speed limit – deadline 9 August 2024.
Draft Nuisance Policy 2024-2027 – deadline 19 August 2024.
Replacement of Racecourse Road (Stroud Green) poplar trees – deadline 1 September 2024.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Local Offer User Voice Survey – deadline 1 September 2024.
West Berkshire Bus Service Survey 2024 – deadline 8 September 2024.
Draft West Berkshire Statement of Gambling Principles 2025-2028 – deadline 12 September 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet.

Thursday 25 July 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes lions, bees, twins, green flags, volunteers, a bus and bikes – plus breaking news concerning the Watermill Bridge development in Wash Water, slow progress at Faraday Road, a correction about a declaration of interest in Enborne, a pair of falcons, rugby ninjas and a parking consultation. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include School’s Out music & performance and Newbury Lion’s Duck Race. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Watermill Bridge

A High Court judge has upheld the Planning Inspector’s appeal decision on Bewley Homes’ Watermill Bridge. You can read the full judgement here.

“We are delighted with the decision of the high court judge, Mr Justice Holgate, whose conclusions were firm and damning on Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council when he stated that the council’s ‘challenge has no legal merit at all,” Andrew Brooks, Managing Director at Bewley Homes, said.

“Watermill Bridge will now provide significant benefits to the local area including 108 affordable homes of different sizes to help towards meeting the needs of over 5,000 families on the local housing register. Furthermore, the scheme includes a convenience store, community centre, healthcare facility and homes for older people providing huge benefit to the wider community.

“Further to the ‘built’ benefits of the scheme, we are committed to providing over 20% increase in biodiversity. This will be delivered through large scale public open space in the form of a riverside park, ponds, allotments and children’s play spaces all helping towards increased social wellbeing.

“This decision also clearly identifies the failings of the local authority to deliver local housing and the undersupply of housing in this area for so many years. This, coupled with the clear direction by the new Government to build more housing, we hope will give current applications less resistance and be looked at more favourably.

“We have a similar size site near Tadley, a town which has not seen any new-build housing for decades, which also ticks all the boxes for a future sustainable development. Our site on Skates Lane, which was selected by the professional planners as an appropriate allocation, was rejected by the politicians for being unpopular with the local objectors.

“We hope this ruling will act as a guiding light to the local authority when taking expensive decisions challenging sound planning decisions.”

• Faraday Road

Football continues to inch its way towards coming home in Newbury although progress has been a lot less speedy than many would wish. The current aim is to have the ground available as a step 7 facility (suitable the league Newbury FC will be playing in) by the first month or two of the 2024-25 season. This will the first time since 2018 that the club has been able to play in its own town.

The next order of business is to consider whether the ground is suitable for a 3G pitch. These are capable of being played on far more frequently than grass ones and will thus go a long way towards addressing the long-standing shortage of playing pitches in the area. The surveying work, which has recently started and will take about three months. Given that this has long been aspiration, I don’t know why this wasn’t started ages ago.

Raising funds from organisations like the Football Foundation will then take at least another year so the earliest start date for any work would be late 2025. This could take longer still if, as is possible, it transpires that the ground underneath the pitch could be used for flood attenuation measures. There are certainly some drainage problems in that area and downstream of it that need fixing.

One important consequence of the 3G pitch is that any grant donor will require a guaranteed lease of at least 20 years for whoever is operating it. This would effectively kill off any plans for redeveloping the ground which have been so ineffectually proposed over the last six years.

Meanwhile, questions are being asked about some of the recent procurement decisions and the matter was due to have come before WBC’s Scrutiny Commission. At the most recent meeting in July, however, it was proposed and agreed that these would instead be looked at by a task and finish group as part of a general review of the council’s project management.

There are pros and cons of both approaches. An outing at Scrutiny can be organised fairly quickly but only allows the matter an hour or so of attention. A task and finish group can do a far deeper dive and spend longer looking into matters. Because of pressures of time and staff (both members and officers), only one task and finish group can run at the same time. The next one due to get off the blocks will be looking at the related matter of the Monks Lane Sports Hub. This was intended as a replacement – or not a replacement, or a partial replacement, or an enhanced replacement, depending on what source you read – for Faraday Road.

This is expected to start work in September and will run until early 2025. The earliest any task and finish for Faraday Road can begin is thus February or March next year: it will thus be at least a year before any of the project-management lessons that this recommends are known. Other projects will, of course, be being started in this time.

• A declaration of interest

In this column last week (see below), we quoted a statement from West Berkshire Councillor Tony Vickers which said that one member of Enborne Parish Council (EPC) had not completed a declaration of interest form. It’s subsequently become clear that although due a technical oversight it wasn’t on the EPC website (it is now), it had been correctly completed and was on WBC’s website.

We’re happy to set the record straight on this point.

Rugby Ninjas

This rugby season marked the first in which Newbury kids coding dojo, Code Ninjas, stepped up to sponsor Newbury RFC’s Mini Section. As part of this sponsorship, one special player was awarded the Code Ninjas Player of the Season in the Newbury Minis, receiving a trophy and well-deserved recognition for their efforts on the field.

“We’re so excited to support the Newbury RFC Mini Section,” said Marcus Brind, owner of Code Ninjas Newbury. “This season has been incredible. Each month, we’ve had the pleasure of recognising standout players in the Newbury Minis with the Code Ninjas Player of the Month award. Witnessing their dedication and growth has been nothing short of inspiring, and it all culminated in the grand celebration of our Code Ninjas Player of the Season award.”

For more about U12 team member Oskar Larkin, this year’s Player of the Season, and how this sponsorship collaboration benefits young people in Newbury click here.

Meet Mr and Mrs Newbury

Did you know there is a pair of peregrin falcons that have been nesting on the top of the BT building in the middle of Newbury for the past few years?

Penny spoke to Dave Webster from the group that watches and supports them. The species has recovered well from the days of DDT which hit apex predators worst but the young are still vulnerable, especially during ‘flop week”. Listen here.

• Parking consultation

You can click here for information about changes too parking arrangements in Newbury, Thatcham, Hungerford, Lambourn, Pangbourne and Theale. This closes on 2 August.

The document says that “We are not seeking views on the revised parking charges. These have already been consulted on as part of the Budget Proposal for 2024/25 on the restructure of parking fees and charges consultation, and a decision was made to adopt the fees and charges at the Full Council Meeting on Thursday, 29 February 2024.  This order amendment is part of the statutory process to implement these charges.”

I’ve asked WBC to confirm but I think this means that the general principle of agreeing the changes to days, times and disabled access has already been consulted on and this latest one is just to look at the details. I also understand that at least one person has questioned whether the first consultation was conducted correctly. However, this should not prevent people from responding to the current one.

One problem with this is that the Notice of Proposal spells out what the proposed arrangements will be but not what they are now. This makes it impossible to be sure what aspect is changing. I’ve suggested to WBC that in future the current arrangements should in each case be printed under the planned ones.

Mind you, perhaps all these ambiguities are just a reality check. Deciphering regulations by the roadside or in a car park can be a complicated business asa the phrasing is not always completely clear. Why should the consultations about them be any different?

• Other news

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the new cycle pathway from Stockcross to Newbury, a new approach to tackle potholes, the roadworks at Bartholomew Street, local recycling, grants for rural businesses and more. Read it here.

• This Sunday 28 July don’t miss Newbury Lion’s Duck Race sponsored this year by the Lock, Stock & Barrel pub. Rescheduled from April when water levels in the canal were too high, the event starts at 2.30pm from Newbury Lock and tickets can be bought from the pub beforehand. See more here.

• The Newbury Twin Town Association welcomed 27 German guests and 10 further guests from its other twin and associated towns for a long weekend between 18 and 22 July 2024 to celebrate 60 years of twinning with Braunfels. The guests and hosts were treated to an entertaining outing to Oxford, a boat trip on the Thames, a buffet dinner and dancing at Stockcross village hall and a garden barbecue. See more details here from NTTA Chair, Gilllian Durrant.

• West Berkshire Council have announced that contractors will be undertaking essential road repairs along Bartholomew Street/Bridge Street/Mansion House in Newbury from Monday 29 July to Saturday 7  September. The works will be undertaken in two parts with a 24-hour road closure and signed alternative diversion route. Access for emergency vehicles will be unavailable through the works site. In part one, work will commence at the Bartholomew Street/Bridge Street/Mansion House Street junction, with no through access from Northbrook Street for the first two weeks. In part two, Bartholomew Street will be closed at the junction with Market Street for the duration of the works, access will be maintained for businesses and the Kennet Centre Car Park. More information can be found here.

• Excellent news, both Victoria Park and City Recreation Ground have once again been awarded ‘Green Flag’ status for 2024/25, as recognised by the Green Flag Award Scheme as one of the very best in the world. The prestigious award is the recognised mark of a quality park or green space, demonstrating the highest possible environmental standards, is well maintained and has excellent visitor facilities. The Town Council received the award for Victoria Park for the first time in 2019 and for the Recreation Ground last year. See more here.

• What would be the impact to you if Royal Berkshire Hospital moved? The Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust is looking at options for a new Royal Berkshire Hospital as part of the government’s New Hospital Programme and have so far identified two sites which could be suitable. They want to understand the impact for staff, patients and the wider community including residents and local businesses if the hospital moves. The two potential sites are: Thames Valley Park (at the end of A329M) and Thames Valley Science Park (off the M4 near Shinfield). Please fill in this survey to have your say or email bbt@royalberkshire.nhs.uk with your feedback.

• The Waterside Centre are celebrating the end of term with a School’s Out Event, showcasing local young musicians and performers on Saturday 27 July. There will be refreshments and other summer treats available from the Waterside café. That’s taking place from 2pm to 6pm, details can be found here.

• The Waterside Centre, Newbury is also pleased to be celebrating its third birthday this summer and invites everyone to their family celebration on Saturday 3 August. The centre will be open all day from 10am to 4pm hosting special events marking the anniversary including a bouncy castle, canoe rides, face painting, the stocks – sponge a youth worker, rounders in the park, fun and games in the hall, arts and crafts including creating a commemorative mural for the centre plus a courtyard BBQ and free ice cream and squash for under 18s. Official cake cutting will take place at midday.

• For more inspiration regarding family and children’s activities this summer holiday see our Local Summer Holiday Guide for days out, family activities, summer camps, fun for free and some great recipes to enjoy making at home.

• The Base, Greenham is hosting a very special immersive and interactive exhibition for families this summer which celebrates wildlife and art.  OTTOPIA runs from Tuesday 6 to Thursday 29 August when you can wander through OTTOPIA’s incredible black and white garden plush with giant flowers, trees, mushrooms and cacti. Packed with side-quests, and interactive games, all curated to ensure an unforgettable experience for families and visitors of all ages. Throughout your time in OTTOPIA you’ll learn interesting, fun facts about otters and other British wildlife and you can even complete the ‘Champion spOTTER Quest’ which will take you on a tour of The Base, hunting down black and white striped wildlife who have escaped OTTOPIA. Tickets can be bought here.

• West Berkshire Council wants feedback on their SEND Local Offer website which includes information about the services available for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in West Berkshire.  Have your say on the website and how easily you can find the information by participating in the survey here. For more surveys to participate in see the Have Your Say section below.

• Ever wanted to learn more about bees or try your hand at beekeeping? Nature for Help and Ben’s Berkshire Bee are holding a free beekeeping workshop at Shaw House. The event will take place on Thursday 22 August and booking is essential due to limited places. To book get in touch at amy.bosley1@westberks.gov.uk.

• Veolia’s Sustainability Fund is back and offering up to £1,000 worth of funding to help support people across West Berkshire to improve the environment. Non-profit organisations, community groups or individuals can apply here to help transform their local community through green projects. Applications close Monday 30 September.

• Well done to all the 470 school children who entered a competition run by West Berkshire Council to give a name to the West Berkshire Community Connect bus service which was launched earlier this year connecting Newbury with the Northwest Downlands area. The winner – Jam Buster – was the brainchild of Chloe from The Willows Primary School. You can read more in this statement from West Berkshire Council.

• Local schools, councils and charitable organisations can apply for the Greenham Trust’s Greenham Trust Planting Project 2024 for free trees and hedging plants. For more info and how to apply can be found here. Applications close on Wednesday 31 July.

• Everyone Active would love to hear your thoughts, opinions and development ideas for the local leisure centres it runs, including Northcroft Leisure Centre. Please have your say by completing this brief survey and select the leisure centre you use.

• The Volunteer Driver Service Berkshire is calling for more volunteers to spare a few hours a week to help them. They have nearly 5000 clients/patients that rely on their 150 volunteer drivers to get them to essential appointments. This role is fully flexible and and work around your schedule and you receive 45p per mile starting from your door. Please email info@volunteerdriverservice.org.uk to find out more.

• Quick reminder that unwanted or broken bikes can be taken to Newbury Community Project/Community Resource Centre who will fix them up and sell them on and with proceeds going to volunteering and training opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged adults and young people in the local community. Get in touch with them at enquiries@cfpnewbury.org or call 01635 43933 to learn more.

• Latest news from Greenham Trust includes how to apply for free trees and hedging plants to be planted in November. Plus the application deadlines for the autumn Escalator and Mini-Escalator which gives a local group the opportunity to raise £30,000 and the Greenham Trust Charity Awards on Thursday 7 November.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area – see here for the line-up over this long Easter weekend. And get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is offering a range of courses for volunteers, trustees, and anyone in the charity sector. Too see what courses they’re offering and to book a place, click here.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people? Please see here for more details.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. See West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Draft Parking Review of Off-Street Parking Places Amendment 13 (REF0013IM) – deadline 2 August 2024.
Argyle Road, Hampton Road and Derby Road, Newbury: Proposed 20mph speed limit – deadline 9 August 2024.
Draft Nuisance Policy 2024-2027 – deadline 19 August 2024.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Local Offer User Voice Survey – deadline 1 September 2024.
West Berkshire Bus Service Survey 2024 – deadline 8 September 2024.
Draft West Berkshire Statement of Gambling Principles 2025-2028 – deadlne 12 September 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet

Thursday 18 July 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes bees, a band, a fair, trees, nappies and volunteers – plus a couple of statements regarding Enborne’s showpeople, the Stockcross cycleway, work at the Northcroft Centre. good news and uncertainty and Educafé and a deafening silence regarding Phoenix Court. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Newbury Pride Parade & Event and Watermill Family Fete. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Enborne’s showpeople

We mentioned last week (see below) about the controversy concerning the proposed travelling showpersons’ site in Enborne. This included a link to an online petition organised by Enborne PC (which opposes the proposals); also a statement from the owner of Zippo’s Circus. This article in turn referred to an earlier article in June in which I looked into the history of the site and its designations and quoted a statement from Enborne PC on the matter.

On 18 July we received another statement, this time from West Berkshire Council. This is reproduced verbatim below.

“The land is privately owned and has been submitted for development through the West Berkshire Local Plan Review 2022-2039 (LPR). Policy RSA25 of the plan relates to the allocation of land at Long Copse Farm Enborne for a Travelling Showpersons yard for 24 plots. This plan was submitted to the Secretary of State on 31 March 2023.  The site was first allocated through Policy TS2 of the Housing Site allocations development plan document (adopted 2017). A Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessment was carried out in 2019 (updated 2021) which continued to identify a need for the pitches and the site was therefore allocated again through Policy RSA25 of the Local Plan Review currently at examination.

“Although the land in question is included as a proposed site within the Local Plan, it is incorrect to suggest that this site has been ‘promoted’ by the local planning authority or any Member of the Executive.

“The Liberal Democrat Administration intended to withdraw the Local Plan Review at Council on 19th December 2023, but on this date a Direction from theMinister of State for Housing, Planning and Building Safety was received instructing the Council to:

• Not to take any step to withdraw the plan from examination;
• On conclusion of the examination, to publish the Planning Inspector’s recommendations and reasons;
• On conclusion of the examination, to consider adopting the plan, including any main modifications recommended by the Planning Inspector deemed necessary to make the plan sound.

“The Local Plan Review is the subject of an Examination in Public which is currently ongoing.

“A planning application for the use of the land of up to 24 travelling Snowperson’s plots was submitted to the Council by Zippo and Company on 1st December 2023. Amended plans associated with the application were received on 21st June 2024 and have been the subject of further public consultation. This application will be considered by the Western Area Planning Committee at a future date.”

Councillor Tony Vickers, who is one of the members mentioned in the petition’s preamble, also contacted Penny Post about this on 18 July.

“When the original application for the site was being considered by this Council as Local Planning Authority (2015 to 2017), there were no Lib Dem members on West Berks Council west of Greenham, including in this ward. Any suggestion that Denise Gaines, I or any other Lib Dem councillor or group of councillors are responsible is false.

“I would also point out that when I looked at Enborne Parish Council website a few days ago, the Conservative candidate in last year’s local election to represent Enborne at District had not completed a Register of Interests. WBC’s Monitoring Officer is aware of this. [See the 25 July section above for a correction on this point.]

“Finally, I do not consider that I have even shown a ‘pre-disposition’ to approve any planning application for this site.”

• On your bike

A statement from West Berkshire Council says that it has “successfully completed Stage 1 of the Stockcross Linkway, a new shared path designed for pedestrians and cyclists, connecting Stockcross Village to Newbury.

“Running alongside the B4000, from Stockcross Village to the A4 roundabout, this first-stage scheme was driven by representations from Speen Parish Council, the Active Travel Heat Map consultation in 2021, and £280,000 funding from the government’s Active Travel Fund. The project was developed in collaboration with Active Travel England, Speen Parish Council, and Ward Councillors for Newbury Speen.”

More information can be found here.

• All change at the Northcroft Centre

Northcroft Leisure Centre in Newbury is set for a major transformation as a result of a £4.6 million investment from West Berkshire Council. The leisure centre is, a statement from WBC explains, “managed by Everyone Active in partnership with West Berkshire Council and is already a popular facility with the recently refurbished lido being a particular favourite among residents and visitors alike.

“Thanks to the multi-million-pound investment, the refurbishment will see Northcroft Leisure Centre transform into a state-of-the-art facility that can continue to be enjoyed for years to come. The exciting plans include:

• A larger gym with top-of-the-range equipment;
• A new dedicated cycle studio;
• Dedicated gym changing rooms for added convenience;
• A larger and improved soft play area for children to enjoy;
• The addition of a café;
• An overall improved look and feel throughout the leisure centre.

WBC expects the upgrade work to start in September with full completion predicted for June 2025. The project will be completed in stages: the gym will be the first of the facilities to be refurbished, with plans to reopen in early 2025. The gym will be temporarily relocated to the sports hall while works are underway. There will be some disruption to services, but they have been planned to be as minimal as possible. The centre will be relocating various classes and activities within the site to avoid the need for closure and ensure that customers continue to receive an excellent service.

• Good news and uncertainty at Educafé

Parents Village, which is a part of Educafé at Newbury Library on term-time Wednesdays, has been awarded £20,000 by the The National Lottery Community Fund to continue its weekly drop-in sessions for parents and little ones. The Parents Village provides “a safe and judgement-free space for new parents to socialise, access expert advice and attend baby/toddler friendly sessions for free.”

A statement from Educafé  said that “this new funding means Educafe can continue to deliver its unique activity programme and online groups that support new families at this important stage of life. it will make a huge difference to local families, weaving a network of support, empowerment and a nurturing community where parents and little ones can thrive. Therefore, we would like to say a special thank you to the National Lottery players for their support.”

As regards Educafé generally, the news is less certain. “We are currently applying for significant long-term unrestricted funding for our core costs but this may take six-plus months to secure,” one of Educafé’s founders, Clare Middleton, told Penny Post on 18 July. “If we do not secure funding, from January the Cafe and Chatty Corner services will be stripped back considerably or paused. We are in close contact with WBC’s Education and Housing and Migration teams amongst others and hope this kind of ongoing conversation yields some extra support.”

I’ve been to Educafé several times and Penny goes most weeks. From small beginnings it’s grown into a vibrant and vital event at which a range of people from diverse backgrounds can meet and take part in activities ranging from craft sessions to English conversation classes. It’s particularly beneficial to those who are in any way socially excluded and so plays a major role in improving mental health throughout the district. It also gets people into the Library at a time when the building would otherwise be under-utilised.

All in all, it ticks a lot of boxes and would seem to be an obvious funding beneficiary for any council or other organisation that wants to promote inclusivity and well-being. Let’s hope we have some good news to report on this before too long.

• Phoenix Court

No news of any kind continues to flood out of West Berkshire Council and Sovereign on this long-running matter. The key point at issue is whether the wretched joint venture between the organisations to build about 55 social homes in Newbury and Hungerford is going to reformed, wound up or what. It seems inconceivable that it will be allowed to continue as it is. It has so far accomplished nothing apart from wasting time and money. Questions already need to be asked about why this has been run so ineffectively and every day that passes only makes these questions more serious. More information has been promised in the next weeks or so: but I’ve heard that before…

This was a matter that the new administration inherited from its predecessor in May 2023. We all understand that a number of matters can’t be fixed overnight and, to its credit, the current council has already addressed some (but not all) of the things it said it would. However, when something remains unfixed fifteen months later, it starts to look less like an inherited problem and more like one of your own.

• Other news

• Ever wanted to get into beekeeping but not sure where to start? Well the Newbury & District Beekeepers Association are holding a free taster session, on Tuesday July 23 at 6:30pm. This free session, lasting an hour or so, is available to anyone interested in beekeeping. They will explain how to get started and take a look inside a working beehive. If you’re interested in finding out more, please email, training@newburybeekeepers.org.uk.

• This Sunday 21 July, the Tadley Band will be playing on the Victoria Park Bandstand from 3pm to 5pm. Fingers crossed for a lovely sunny day!

• This Sunday 21 July it’s the Shaw House Summer Fair. From 11am to 4pm, enjoy over 60 local stalls, refreshments from the café, bar and caterers. There will be plenty of fun activities from children such as crafts, a magic show, Shetland ponies and a bouncy castle. They will also be holding a dog show with categories including ‘perfect puppy’, ‘golden oldie’ and ‘radiant rescue’. Entry is £2 for adults and £1 for Children. Click here for further details.

• The West Berkshire Council SEND Local Offer website includes information about the services, support and activities available for children and young people aged 0-25 with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in West Berkshire. It’s a guide to what you can expect to find in our area and how you can access those services. They want to hear from you to know if you’re aware of this website, and if so, can you easily find the information you need and if you have any suggestions. To learn more and take part in the survey, click here.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin covers the Northcroft Leisure Centre, the Council Strategy for 2023 to 2027, whooping cough vaccinations, Shared Lives news, off-street parking and more. Read it here.

• ARK – Action for the River Kennet report with great sadness that it has had to cancel three River Schools over the last week due to untreated sewage being discharged from the Winterbourne Sewage Treatment Works directly into the Winterbourne Stream, which is just upstream of where they run lots of ‘in river’ River Schools with local schools and Cub and Beaver groups. Unfortunately Thames Water has no imminent plans to stop the discharges and so they are working hard to organise River Schools at alternative stretches of chalk streams. For more information about sewage overflow click here.

• Ever wanted to learn more about bees or try your hand at beekeeping? Nature for Help and Ben’s Berkshire Bee are holding a free beekeeping workshop at Shaw House. The event will take place on Thursday 22 August and booking is essential due to limited places. To book get in touch at amy.bosley1@westberks.gov.uk.

• Veolia’s Sustainability Fund is back and offering up to £1,000 worth of funding to help support people across West Berkshire to improve the environment. Non-profit organisations, community groups or individuals can apply here to help transform their local community through green projects. Applications close Monday 30 September.

• West Berkshire Council is offering free trial packs of reusable nappies, for children under the age of 18 months old. To apply for a free nappy trial pack by click here.

• Local schools, councils and charitable organisations can apply for the Greenham Trust’s Greenham Trust Planting Project 2024 for free trees and hedging plants. For more info and how to apply can be found here. Applications close on Wednesday 31 July.

• Everyone Active would love to hear your thoughts, opinions and development ideas for the local leisure centres it runs, including Northcroft Leisure Centre. Please have your say by completing this brief survey and select the leisure centre you use.

• The Volunteer Driver Service Berkshire is calling for more volunteers to spare a few hours a week to help them. They have nearly 5000 clients/patients that rely on their 150 volunteer drivers to get them to essential appointments. This role is fully flexible and and work around your schedule and you receive 45p per mile starting from your door. Please email info@volunteerdriverservice.org.uk to find out more.

• Quick reminder that unwanted or broken bikes can be taken to Newbury Community Project/Community Resource Centre who will fix them up and sell them on and with proceeds going to volunteering and training opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged adults and young people in the local community. Get in touch with them at enquiries@cfpnewbury.org or call 01635 43933 to learn more.

• Latest news from Greenham Trust includes how to apply for free trees and hedging plants to be planted in November. Plus the application deadlines for the autumn Escalator and Mini-Escalator which gives a local group the opportunity to raise £30,000 and the Greenham Trust Charity Awards on Thursday 7 November.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area – see here for the line-up over this long Easter weekend. And get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is offering a range of courses for volunteers, trustees, and anyone in the charity sector. Too see what courses they’re offering and to book a place, click here.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people? Please see here for more details.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. See West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Draft Parking Review of Off-Street Parking Places Amendment 13 (REF0013IM) – deadline 2 August 2024.
Draft Nuisance Policy 2024-2027 – deadline 19 August 2024.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Local Offer User Voice Survey – deadline 1 September 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet

Thursday 11 July 2024

Our usual round-up of local news includes pride, a sewage cancellation, nature walks, sustainability and a survey – plus no news at Phoenix Court, rewilding in the LRIE, a run-off in the SSSI, Enborne’s showmen and a gracious speech. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Newbury events include Newbury Pride Parade & Event and Watermill Family Fete. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Phoenix Court

Ah ha, you might think: at last some news about this much-needed development (and the related one in Chestnut Walk in Hungerford) which this wretched joint venture between West Berkshire Council and Sovereign has been promising for years to deliver. (“Phoenix”, in the sense of something that rises from the ashes or what was there before, is hardly an appropriate name for something which is actually doing quite the opposite.) So – is there any news?

Sadly not. I mention it just to demonstrate that there is no news, despite my having sent at least a dozen emails or phone calls to those who will either be deciding this or communicating the results. A meeting between the two parties was meant to have happened recently. However, what options were discussed and with what results, or whether or not it even took place, are not matters I can enlighten you on. Rest assured that those to whom I’ve contacted on this will be contacted again for as long as is necessary until a decision is made.

The questions of what this fiasco has so far cost and how it was allowed to proceed for so long and accomplish so little at a time when such homes are badly needed can wait for another day but will not be forgotten about either. Watch, as I’ve said many times before, this space.

• Rewilding at the LRIE

The London Road Industrial Estate in Newbury is not noted for its bucolic splendours but WBC has recently started to remedy this in a small way.

Stuart Gourley, WBC’s Environment portfolio holder, has announced that tree- and shrub-planting work there would “green-up Faraday Road utilising parking spaces which are currently underutilised. Some spaces will be replaced by permeable surface planted with hardy species of shrubs and some small trees, which will have the added benefit of attenuating some surface water – however this is not the main purpose of the scheme.”

A council spokesperson also added that “Some areas of hard standing will be removed to provide tree pits and underground water storage, which will also help to reduce surface water run-off and reduce the risk of flooding downstream from the site.”

I also suggested to Stuart Gourley, and he agreed, that many forms of plants can also help deal with pollutants that come either from overflowing sewers or run-off from roads. Whether these plants have been chosen with this purpose in mind I’m not sure: but I guess every little helps.

“The scheme was initially proposed by consultants Hemingway Design and Ardent,” he continued, “as part of the Council’s efforts to improve the public realm of Bond Riverside [see last para below] as a location for investment and employment. Work has started and will continue until mid-August. Minimal disruption is expected and the highway will not be closed.” he added that “local interested residents were advised of this work in advance. Plans have been shared with residents who asked to see them and with the Newbury Flood and Drainage Forum for wider consumption by the public.”

The question for many is “how much will this cost the council-tax payers?” The answer is nothing as it’s all fully funded by the Local Enterprise partnership.

The headline to this story is out of date as the area is now known as “Bond Riverside”. This is not, as you might have read elsewhere, a new name but one that was decided on back in March 2023 as part of a pre-election re-visioning exercise by the previous administration. The time to rename the area might better come when something about it has significantly changed. These shrubs, an adornment as they’ll doubtless be, certainly don’t cut it. I’ll continue to be old-school and call it the LRIE until this happens.

• Run-off in the SSSI

We mentioned before about the alarming discovery made earlier this year by Action for the River Kennet (ARK) that there are some serious pollutants in the River Lambourn downstream of Easton where the M4 crosses the river. The culprit is the run-off from the motorway which includes some nasty chemicals shed by tyres. These are by many estimates the biggest single contributor to the amount of marine micro-plastics and also contain substances very toxic to aquatic life.

It seems that ARK has its work cut out on this one. Not only does Highways England (HE) n0t seem very interested in this particular outflow but it is not anyone’s job to regulate road run-off, in the way that the Environment Agency does for sewage and one-off pollution spills. Surely poisons being introduced in the river systems 24/7/365 from the roads should also be classified as pollution spills: or is it only serious if it only happens occasionally?

Charlotte Hitchmough from ARK told me that another problem was that HE’s preferred way of dealing with this is by a compulsory purchase (CPO) of the affected land, a policy whose cost and complexity would make any solutions out of the question. Here, it seems that some significant mitigation could take place with the permission of the landowner (who is agreeable) to channel the outflow into a reed bed which could then by various means filter the worst of them off before returning the less dirty water further downstream. This would “only” cost a five-figure sum, probably rather less than just the legal advice for a CPO.

She also pointed out that similar projects, including in Brighton, have produced tangible benefits in similar circumstances. Why not here?

It seems that tyre regulations are changing, the US and the EU taking different routes (the Americans are making them less toxic while the Europeans are making them harder and so less prone to erosion). It’s unclear which, if either, route poor little us will adopt. In the mean time, the Lambourn continues to act as a drain for not only our sewage system and agricultural water but also our road run-off. Many might ask what is the point of the river having designations like SAC and SSSI – as many decorations as a North Korean general but all essentially meaningless if they don’t result in proper protection.

• Enborne’s showmen

On 27 June in this column (see below) we looked at the issue of the travelling showmen site in Enborne which has recently caused some local controversy. Rather than add anything new this week I’ll just draw your attention to a petition launched by Enborne Parish Council. The preamble reads as follows:

“Enborne Parish Council (EPC) has appointed Irwin Mitchell LLP to act on its behalf in opposing plans to develop approximately 15* acres of land in the heart of Enborne.  This is a very big step for us because we are opposing plans that our district council has put forward.  We remain hopeful that our district councillors will represent us in this matter. However, we also note that as current and former Portfolio holders for Planning, Councillors Gaines and Vickers are responsible for the promotion of this site under policy RSA25.

“The first step for our legal team is to formulate an objection to the current application and thereafter we will be able to review other legal options to hold our district council to account. There are now over a hundred local people concerned about this issue. Enborne, with the support of our neighbouring Hamstead Marshall Parish Council, will continue to speak up for our community.

“(* The site area was recently increased and now includes land outside the designated area of policy TS2, and also includes land where there is ongoing enforcement action for previous unlawful development near ancient woodland.  It should be noted that whilst the application refers to 24 plots, there is no limitation on the level of occupancy or number of caravans on the site.”

Commenting on this, Marin Burton of Zippo’s Circus provided the following statement on 14 July:

“I refer to the proposal to build showmen’s yards in Enborne. Penny Post on 11 July quotes a petition from Enborne PC which refers to the extension of the land to be occupied by Showmen’s Yards from 10 acres to 15 acres. This is not the case. The showmen’s yards remain planned for 10 acres, with no increase.

“The acreage was amended (at WBC’s request I might add) to include an attenuation pond and a wastewater holding tank. This is not an increase to the number of showmen’s yards nor the number of bona fide showmen occupying them. I don’t think we could have been any clearer in our explanation to the Parish Council as to why the red line was increased.

“We have said several times in our submissions to WBC that we will accept a condition to limit the use of the yard to travelling showpeople (or even a legal agreement). Longcopse Farm will never be a Gypsy Traveller encampment. This was also mentioned at the recent session on the site at the local plan examination, at which Enborne Parish Council was present. The Parish Council continues to completely ignore what is a fundamental point, in an effort I assume to whip up local objections against my proposal for showmen’s yards and gain misinformed signatures for its petition.”

You can click here for more from Enborne Parish Council on this and a link to the petition.

• Speech day

Congratulations to long-term Thatcham resident Lee Dillon who is now the Lib Dem MP for the Newbury constituency. Congratulations also to Laura Farris for having offered what appeared to have been very gracious words of congratulations to him. This can never be easy, particularly at five in the morning and after a six-week campaign. Her remarks certainly stopped a long way short of those that had a few hours before been uttered thirty or so miles to the west by former MP Robert Buckland in Swindon. He was equally gracious to his victorious opponent, reserving all his ire for the incompetencies in his own party. If Laura Farris shared these views she clearly decided that this was not the moment to express them.

• Other news

• This weekend it’s the Newbury Pride Parade and Event. The gathering will start at Saturday 13 July from 12:30pm at Bartholomew Street outside the Kennet Centre, for the Parade to leave at 1pm. Then the route will pass along Northbrook Street, into the West Street entrance of Parkway, then on to the Middle Street and down the steps to cross the road into Victoria Park – where the party begins. The festivities will include live music, food and drink and a market area with lots of local products. Everyone is welcome and there will be disabled access. For updates follow their Facebook page.

• This Sunday 14 July are more local events to enjoy including  The Watermill Family Fete at the Watermill Theatre in Bagnor and the Berkshire Classic Motor Show, over at Newbury Show Ground.

• The latest West Berkshire Council Residents Bulletin reflects on last week’s general election, new apartments for refugee families, a call for more foster carers, coffee pot recycling, the 2024 Summer Reading Challenge and more. Read it here.

• ARK – Action for the River Kennet report with great sadness that it has had to cancel three River Schools over the last week due to untreated sewage being discharged from the Winterbourne Sewage Treatment Works directly into the Winterbourne Stream, which is just upstream of where they run lots of ‘in river’ River Schools with local schools and Cub and Beaver groups. Unfortunately Thames Water has no imminent plans to stop the discharges and so they are working hard to organise River Schools at alternative stretches of chalk streams. For more information about sewage overflow click here.

• Newbury Friends of the Earth and the Secret Garden Project invite you on a Guided Nature Walk in the West Fields area of the Newbury Nature Corridor, starting at 7pm on Thursday 18 July. From bats to no dig veg, water capture to bug hotels and hedgehog highways, come see what your community is doing and share ideas on green-gardening and how to invite more wildlife into our local spaces. Meet at Newbury Lock (near the Lock Stock and Barrel pub). See more details here.

• Ever wanted to learn more about bees or try your hand at beekeeping? Nature for Help and Ben’s Berkshire Bee are holding a free beekeeping workshop at Shaw House. The event will take place on Thursday 22 August and booking is essential due to limited places. To book get in touch at amy.bosley1@westberks.gov.uk.

• Veolia’s Sustainability Fund is back and offering up to £1,000 worth of funding to help support people across West Berkshire to improve the environment. Non-profit organisations, community groups or individuals can apply here to help transform their local community through green projects. Applications close Monday 30 September.

• West Berkshire Council is offering free trial packs of reusable nappies, for children under the age of 18 months old. To apply for a free nappy trial pack by click here.

• Local schools, councils and charitable organisations can apply for the Greenham Trust’s Greenham Trust Planting Project 2024 for free trees and hedging plants. For more info and how to apply can be found here. Applications close on Wednesday 31 July.

• Everyone Active would love to hear your thoughts, opinions and development ideas for the local leisure centres it runs, including Northcroft Leisure Centre. Please have your say by completing this brief survey and select the leisure centre you use.

• The Volunteer Driver Service Berkshire is calling for more volunteers to spare a few hours a week to help them. They have nearly 5000 clients/patients that rely on their 150 volunteer drivers to get them to essential appointments. This role is fully flexible and and work around your schedule and you receive 45p per mile starting from your door. Please email info@volunteerdriverservice.org.uk to find out more.

• Quick reminder that unwanted or broken bikes can be taken to Newbury Community Project/Community Resource Centre who will fix them up and sell them on and with proceeds going to volunteering and training opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged adults and young people in the local community. Get in touch with them at enquiries@cfpnewbury.org or call 01635 43933 to learn more.

• Latest news from Greenham Trust includes how to apply for free trees and hedging plants to be planted in November. Plus the application deadlines for the autumn Escalator and Mini-Escalator which gives a local group the opportunity to raise £30,000 and the Greenham Trust Charity Awards on Thursday 7 November.

• Sound Newbury facebook page promotes live gigs in the local area – see here for the line-up over this long Easter weekend. And get in touch with the facebook page if your event isn’t included.

• The Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is offering a range of courses for volunteers, trustees, and anyone in the charity sector. Too see what courses they’re offering and to book a place, click here.

• Would you like to volunteer your business expertise to help Education Business Partnership prepare our local young people? Please see here for more details.

• If you need to let off steam about Newbury’s current roadworks, join the Newbury Happening Now facebook group. See West Berkshire Council’s list of roads prioritised for improving here.

• The Green Hub on West Berkshire Council’s website is focused on helping people make more sustainable choices collectively along our journey to Net Zero, whether you live, work or learn in West Berkshire or are a business owner or visitor. The information covers energy efficiency, taking climate action, community work and sustainable business.

• For support and advice with any flooding issues in Newbury please join the Newbury Flood and Drainage Action Facebook Group.

• Have your say

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

Draft Parking Review of Off-Street Parking Places Amendment 13 (REF0013IM) – deadline 2 August 2024.
Draft Nuisance Policy 2024-2027 – deadline 19 August 2024.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Local Offer User Voice Survey – deadline 1 September 2024.

Parish and town councils also run consultations from time to time: see the appropriate website/s below under Council contacts.

• Latest local newsletters

• Newbury Town Council.
• Hamstead Hornet

Thursday 4 July 2024