Monday 27 February 2012

A Deep Cut




Friday 24th February

I bumped into the police on Friday night.

No - not a fracas outside of Tru nightclub in the High Street.
This was outside the Deepcut Community Centre at Dettingen Park where a public meeting was being held to discuss several aspects in regard to the forthcoming barracks development. Over five hundred people, including residents, councillors and even our MP Michael Gove had turned out on a chilly Friday night in response to a local leaflet highlighting the plans to add gypsy caravan pitches to the scheme.

Regrettably, even though I'd arrived in good time, the three hundred capacity hall was already fit to burst and the police, ably stewarded by Sgt Castell, were ensuring public saftety by limiting further admission. In dramatic fashion, the remaining residents (myself included) were herded to the open windows to view the progress of the meeing, but I have to admit that after 30 minutes or so, the situation became ridiculous and so I retired to the pub with a number of other residents and councillors to consider what we had heard.

Michael Gove had, as ever, spoken very well about his understanding of the concerns. Paul Deach's Residents' Blog has the detail of what he said, but I was wholly in agreement with the infrastructure comments he made. Simply, it is unsustainable and unjustifiable to drop what is in effect a new settlement into that area without ensuring that the necessary infrastructure has been put in place.
Personally, I believe that necessary schools, shops and other residential amenties are likely to be accommodated. What I remain concerned about - as I have done for some time now - is the complete lack of new transport infrastructure for our part of the world, particularly, Red Road, MacDonald Road, the A322 and the M3 junction. These routes - and indeed this network - is already at capacity. It is already littered with the memories and results of continued accidents. And yet, in spite of this, the Deepcut plans continue unabated with regard to who is going to pay to improve this network to be able to safely accommodate a further 1200 homes.

It's only fair to say that a County Council Traffic study had been commissioned, but that the genius behind that one undertook some of the data collection during school hoildays and even a bank holiday.

So we may throw that one in the bin.

What I want to see now are two things:
1/ A proper traffic study to illustrate exactly what is needed to accommodate these dwellings
and
2/ A commitment from the Borough and County Councils - and if necessary, centrally - that the monies for network capacity increases and improvements can be sought from the developers of the proposed scheme and central funding (as in the case of Jealotts Park, Bracknell for example).

Both of these are standard requirements for much smaller schemes, so I can't quite accept that they haven't yet to be formally considered. However, without them, the proposed scheme should not be granted a consent.
Indeed, without them, any authority may very well be leaving themselves open to an enormous legal challenge.

(There will be further blog posts about this subject to follow).

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