2017 Roundup

Following on from a busy 2016 last year, 2017,  proved to be an equally busy year on the planning front.

Although the Baughurst Society does have a social aspect it is worth remembering that the Society has over the years fought off a number of developments that were out of keeping with the local environment.  Most noteworthy of these, from the dim and distant past, was the National Grid’s proposal for a string of pylons between Bramley and Thatcham that would have gone straight through the middle of Baughurst (the Wellington arms may well have had a pylon in its back garden!)..

An application for 4 traveller sites off of Violet Lane was submitted and rejected after a concerted effort by local residents to voice their concerns and objections.  The developer took the planning application to appeal.  At this stage the community as a whole kicked into action. Driven by a group directly affected by the application an approach to defeat the appeal was put together, central to this strategy was to engage professional planning consultants to go head to head with those of the appellant. It’s a simple fact of life that consultants cost money, so the community as a whole was asked to make whatever contribution they could to form a fighting fund. Over 50 people contributed to create a fund of just over £10,000.  To cut a long story short the fighting fund enabled us to engage a planning consultant and a transport consultant to fight the appeal on two fronts. We were successful!

The application for a 120 bed care home at the top of the golf course on Bishopswood Lane. has been approved. This is despite concerns about increased traffic levels on Bishopswood Lane and on the surrounding residential roads during the construction phase.

Nonetheless, one thing that we should bear in mind is that the Golf Course want to use the profit from this scheme to build a hotel and conference centre on the site. If this were to be on the driving range site, then we should be getting ready for another battle.