In her weekly article for the Herald series, Julie Mabberley, manager of the Wantage and Grove Campaign Group, scrutinises town development plans

AN article in the Herald two weeks ago talked about the detailed plans for 1,500 homes on Crab Hill.

This is a planning application for the discharge of some conditions included in the approval of the outline planning consent in 2015.

According to the district council this application is not subject to public consultation, so the entire look and feel of the biggest development in Wantage is going to be decided without any input from the existing residents and probably without going to a planning committee.

Even our elected councillors won’t have an opportunity to discuss the development.

Once permission has been given we will have no opportunity to influence the design, layout or even content of the development.

This application includes details of site wide strategies including roads, footpaths, infrastructure, landscape, and open space.

It includes a phasing plan identifying the timing of completion of roads, the primary school and community facilities.

It also defines the spread of housing across the whole site including details of number and mix of homes (both affordable and market housing).

As the article said, the high density core of the development will contain more than 200 flats and there will be a total of 339 one and two bedroom flats (the remaining flats will be close to the Wantage Relief Road at the northern edge of the development).

Over half of the properties will be 2-3 bedroom houses and the remainder will be 4-6 bedroom houses.

The only separate cycleways will be around the edge of the development through the "country park". In the development, cyclists will have to share the roads or pavements, so no improvements there then.

They do not appear to have considered the recommendation in the outline planning application for downgrading to a footpath / cycleway or bridleway the section of "By-way Open to All Traffic" (Crab Hill Lane or Gypsy Lane – depending how old you are) running between Charlton Village Road and the northern side of the new Wantage Eastern Relief Road.

They also appear to have forgotten that there are two public footpaths to Grove not just one.

The proposed building materials in the strategy seem to include a lot of wood cladding (using examples of Belgium or Cambridge) so it’s going to look like any other development in Europe and won’t reflect the existing character of our area.

They will also have to follow the county parking restrictions. Even for six-bedroom houses a maximum of two parking spaces are permitted so we can expect the development to turn into a parking lot very quickly.

I was at a planning conference last week and one of the speakers pointed out that this country is very good at bad development and very bad at good development.

In Wantage we have recent examples of both, but we won’t get the opportunity to influence which sort Crab Hill will become.