Aylesbury Housing: Inspector’s Report on Quarrendon Fields

Last month, the Planning Inspectorate and the Secretary of State upheld AVDC’s refusal of planning permission for about 1400 homes, a primary school and other facilities in the so-called Quarrendon Fields area which lies between the approved development areas at Berryfields and Weedon Hill/Buckingham Park.

The documents, including the full text of the Inspector’s report can be seen HERE. The Inspector sets out her reasons for upholding the Council’s decision in paragraphs 121 onwards.

The arguments set out here strike me as very relevant to the current planning application in respect of the so-called Hampden Fields area between  Bedgrove and Weston Turville. I suspect that both AVDC and the development consortium will be looking carefully at the Inspector’s reasoning.

 

HS2: Letter to TfL about Capacity at Euston

I have written to the Commissioner of Transport for London to pass on the concerns of a constituent regarding the number of additional passengers who will use Euston Mainline and Underground Stations if HS2 goes ahead.  My constituent is worried that the volume of additional people will cause congestion to what can already be a busy station.  A copy of the letter can be viewed below, and I will post the response when it arrives.

Hemley Hill

Please find below the letter that I received from the Department for Communities and Local Government to my letter dated 7 October (please see travellers post 12 October 2010).

As you can see from the letter, a decision is due to be taken on the appeal by 7 December 2010. The letters says that post-inquiry representations will be considered by the Secretary of State when he makes his decision. I would therefore encourage constituents who feel strongly about this issue to make their feels known to the Department if they have not already done so.

 

High Speed (6)

I have just come off the phone after a ten minute conversation with the Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis.  He accepted straight away that the route he has proposed for HS2 would have a damaging impact on my constituency and the lives of many local residents.

He told me that he had personally travelled up and down the line of each of the route options that had been considered by the Government.  He accepted that the A413 route would mar the Chilterns AONB but said that the southern route option would have involved a viaduct across the Hughenden Valley and his judgement was that this would have disfigured the landscape far more.

We talked a lot about the impact of the proposed route on people living on the western side of Aylesbury.   Lord Adonis said that he had ordered the route moved further away from houses than had originally been suggested.  He promised me that the public consultation would be serious, that every affected local resident would have something from the Department of Transport through their letterbox to tell them about the consultation process and that he was determined to make certain that individual local residents really were encouraged to participate.

He told me that the public consultation would begin in the autumn, before which HS2 Ltd (the Government company set up to promote this scheme) would have prepared more detail about the environmental impact and about mitigation measures.

Buckinghamshire Travel Advice

Constituents wishing to learn about the latest travel advice regarding the adverse weather conditions in the constituency should visit Buckinghamshire County Council’s website by following the link below.

Buckinghamshire County Council