Our usual round-up of Burghfield area news includes Stratfield Mortimer’s meeting, a look back at 2025 and WBC’s finances – plus the Library, recruitment, council vacncies, policing and SEND support. See also below for community notices and news from your local council.

Upcoming Burghfield area events include TV Police & SEND Family Support Fayre. See below for details, plus regular events and group activities.

• Stratfield Mortimer’s meeting

As mentioned on 18 December (see below), opposition continues in Stratfield Mortimer to Basingstoke and Deane Council’s (B&D) proposals to allocate a site for 350 homes at West End Farm, right on the border between B&D and West Berkshire. As we’ve considered in previous weeks (see below), this poses some very serious problems for West Berkshire Council (WBC) and also for Stratfield Mortimer Parish Council (SMPC) and its residents.

As a response to this, B&D organised a consultation drop-in event in Mortimer on 7 January. Attendees included representatives of SMPC and the steering group leading the campaign, several media groups including Meridien News (Penny Post was unable to attend), several officers (but, surprisingly, no elected members) from B&D and about 250 members of the public.

After speaking to one of the attendees the morning after, I don’t get the impression the B&D officers would have greatly enjoyed their trip across the border. It appears that they were subjected to some fairly trenchant questioning. Despite this, it seems little more information was provided than is already available online. The general feeling was that it wasn’t a great performance: “officers were not up to date with the real issues we see on the ground,” a spokesperson for the SMPC steering group observed on 8 January.

The officers might have been under-prepared. Another possibility is there was actually nothing more to be said about a proposal that seems to have been bolted onto B&D’s local plan pretty much at the last minute. A straw poll conducted by the steering group at the end of the event suggest that everyone who attended remained opposed to the scheme.

“The resounding feeling of those who attended the drop-in session was that it was poor and lacking in information,” the statement from the steering group described it. As a method of winning local hearts and minds, it cannot therefore be regarded as a success.

Not, it appears, that B&D was much concerned with this. Two of the admissions made were that the scheme doesn’t have to accord with SM’s recently refreshed neighbourhood development plan and that B&D was not obliged to pay any of the developer funds to WBC (in whose area all the mitigations will need to take place). Neither of these would have gone down well, these being the two main points of contention.

On the second matter, it was admitted that discussions were continuing with WBC. This is part of the duty to co-operate which all planning authorities must at such times demonstrate to their neighbours. Although a recent policy change in Whitehall mean that the lack of this can no longer on its own be a sufficient reason for an Inspector to throw out a local plan, the obligation still remains.

A key point seems to be that, without any serious financial agreement, the site would effectively be unfunded as regards infrastructure mitigation. If this doesn’t suggest to the Inspector a compelling reason to regard the site as unviable then it’s hard to see what would. It’s not as if there weren’t other sites in B&D to select, all of which appear – by B&D’s own policies – to be better. Why this one was chosen remains a bit of mystery; and one on which nothing said at the meeting appeared to shed any light.

This isn’t the only such frontier location that B&D has in mind. Oakley’s Farm in Wash Water is another. If the Inspector is going to strike out more sites, the point may come where the whole plan needs to be rejected. This would lead to a form of wild-west development with applications likely to succeed on appeal, as there will be no current plan to govern them and no sufficient level of housing-land supply (B&D’s is currently below the five-year minimum) to justify any refusal. B&D’s whole strategy thus seems very high-risk.

For SMPC, the next steps would appear to be more of the same – continuing to oppose the plan by all legal means at its disposal. B&D’s top brass will need to maintain discussions with WBC about funding and related matters. As for B&D’s officers, their immediate task will be wading through the hundreds of objections with SMPC’s objection have helped generate. All of these must be considered and logged as part of the Regulation 18 consultation (no small task); all will be available for the Inspector to consider.

While all this is going on, B&D’s decision-makers may perhaps be reflecting on whether allocating these sites at all was really such a good idea. Residents of Stratfield Mortimer have already come to their own conclusions on this one.

• A look back at 2025

We’ve covered a large number in stories in this area over the last twelve months. We’ve picked out some of the major ones below, several of which won’t go away or keep coming back…

• Basingstoke and Deane’s (B&D) local plan. In normal circumstances this would be no particular concern to West Berkshire residents. B&D has, however, proposed to allocate a large site right on the state line which would effectively become an extension of Stratfield Mortimer. Local residents and the Parish Council are up in arms. Another example of nimbies at work? Not quite. As the site is in B&D it’s that council which will received all the developer contributions to mitigate the development’s effect, even though all this mitigation and provision will take place in West Berkshire. it would therefore be effectively an unfunded development. Opposition continues.

• Reading’s land grab. Another contentious issue. The local government reorganisation plans appear to have given Reading Council the courage to make a bid for some of West Berkshire’s eastern parishes. Theale it has abandoned after a parish poll (see below); Pangbourne it has abandoned presumably simply by looking at the map; Purley it has, apparently, had its eye on since the fourteenth century but an unofficial poll conducted by the Parish Council shows a distinct lack of interest. Opinion in Tilehurst, however, may be more finely balanced as this is the one part of West Berkshire where a case could be made for a demographic consistency. The debate continues.

• Theale’s parish poll. As mentioned above, this was held to give the Parish Council a steer on how it should react to Reading’s land-grab. These cost money and are rarely invoked but provide a clear view of what the residents feel about a matter in the way that unofficial surveys never can. The result was an overwhelming vote in favour of remaining in West Berkshire, whereupon Reading withdrew its forces.

• The travellers’ site in Aldermaston. If a few months ago you were to have suggested that a large unauthorised travellers’ encampment would be set up right at the gates of one of the country’s largest nuclear facilities you’d have been laughed at: and yet this is exactly what happened in November. WBC has issues various stop notices and obtained an injunction but the travellers – who own the land – have filed a retrospective planning application, which will set the whole process back several months. The issue is perhaps less one of any view of travellers than the extent to which clever and determined people can outwit a planning system which most are happy to accept as being a necessary constraint on libertarianism.

• The 20mph zones in Theale. These were introduced earlier in the year as something of a pilot for similar schemes elsewhere, this tending to be the direction (and speed) of travel for many highways authorities. A conversation we had with the Parish Council in December suggested that these had been broadly successful.

• The Resource Centres. At the WBC budget meeting in February, it was announced that the district’s three day-care and respite centres, one of which is in Calcot, would probably be  outsourced and the existing centres therefore possibly closed. After a campaign of opposition, this decision was later reversed. How permanent this will prove to be given the state of WBC’s finances is uncertain: this is a service that must be provided but not necessarily by the council directly.

• Withdrawing the funding. In May Mortimer, Burghfield and Sulhampstead Parish Councils decided to stop making payments to support the Willink Leisure Centre. The main reason was that they felt that their influence over how the place was run had withered away. A clause existed which enabled the agreement to be cancelled on payment of one year’s contributions and this was invoked. Other leisure centres have similar agreements, though sometimes with no escape clauses, regarding their local leisure centres. The fact that the funds appear to go to leisure centres generally, rather than that one in particular, makes this seem less like less like a contribution and more like a tax. In an ideal world, WBC would tear up all the agreements and agree something more responsive which would also give the interested parishes more say in how these are run. Whether this will happen, and what the current leisure provider would think of this, is another matter.

• Other local stories and events we’ve covered included the road closures for much of 2025 in Bradfield, the continuing dispute about a proposed concrete plant in Aldermaston, various planning issues in Theale, the re-opening of Burghfield’s skate park and the successful campaign to replace the original post box in Bradfield Southend, the new one threatening the livelihood of those running the local Post office.

West Berkshire Council has a potential funding gap of at least £6.4 million for 2026/27. It is asking local residents to have their say by 12 January on how the council should increase funds and decrease spending to balance the budget. You can click here to have your say. Similar exercises have in the past resulted in some changes being made so your response could well be influential.

• Other news

• Penny Post’s second volume of short stories and parodies by Brian Quinn, Gravity and Rust, is now available from any bookshop, including the Hungerford Bookshop, the White Horse Bookshop in Marlborough and the Wantage Bookshop. Click here for more information.

• The latest newsletter from Burghfield and Mortimer ward member Nick Carter can be read here.

• Englefield Parish Magazine.
• Padworth Village Newsletter.
• Stratfield Mortimer Newsletter.
• Benefice of Aldermaston and Woolhampton
• Mortimer Village Partnership.