On Monday evening Faringdon residents will use public speaking time at the meeting of the Town Council to oppose the proposed data centre and to tell Councillors why Wicklesham Quarry SSSI must be protected from development. If you live in Faringdon or the surrounding area, local Wicklesham supporters urge you to come to the Council meeting and give your support.

Those responsible for local policies need to see the strength of feeling that exists among members of the public, including Faringdon’s new residents, about the appalling policy in the Neighbourhood Plan to turn our most important ecological site into a site for heavy industry.

As reported in the last update, Councillors recently heard a presentation from Spencer Cooper about his aim to build seven 25 metre high buildings and two multi-storey carparks in the quarry, creating a data centre and associated facilities. Members of the public had no opportunity to question Mr Cooper about this outrageous proposal, having been excluded from the meeting by Faringdon Town Council.

New residents have been asking how such a policy was ever allowed to be included in the Neighbourhood Plan. The answer is that the owners of Wicklesham Farm, which includes the quarry, were given control over the allocation of employment land in the plan. They wrote their own policy unchallenged, using ‘data’ they produced themselves. The Town Council allowed them to allocate their own land- which is open countryside in use for agriculture- in spite of the fact that it scored WORSE than all the other sites against which it was compared in the Sustainability Appraisal! The policy was predetermined. It had been rejected by the Vale of White Horse District Council ever since 2008, when its owners began to promote it.

Local people challenged the lawfulness of the plan in the High Court. The judge agreed that Faringdon Council was WRONG to claim Wicklesham Quarry was a brown field site, and that they could NOT overrule County Council planning conditions to restore the quarry to agricultural use. He also stated that the policy was IN CONFLICT with the Local Plan. However, he failed to order the policy to be removed or the plan quashed, leaving the quarry’s future in limbo. It is currently in year 4 of a 5 year Agricultural Aftercare Programme.

In our view, people who voted for this Neighbourhood Plan did so on the basis of demonstrably false claims and inaccurate statements. It is time Faringdon Town Council owned up to this mistake and put it right by disowning this policy. Every independent assessment has concluded that turning Wicklesham Quarry into an industrial site is ‘unjustified’ and ‘unsustainable’.

You can read more about Wicklesham Quarry SSSI and its importance as a habitat for a European Protected Species in the main page of the petition, and in Wicklesham’s CrowdJustice page (now closed), where the views of one of many prominent geologists who support the Campaign are quoted. https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/protect-wicklesham-quarry-from-development/

Please send any questions or comments to protectwicklesham@gmail.com.

Please join us on Monday 12th June at 7.00pm at the Pump House, Market Place, Faringdon and help to support local residents still fighting to save Wicklesham Quarry SSSI and Conservation Target Area!