Many thanks to Sarah for this beautiful photo of Wicklesham Quarry earlier this week after the rain! Please send your comments on the planning application to Oxfordshire County Council- not to me! Comments made on the petition itself or emailed to me WILL NOT COUNT in the public planning consultation on Wicklesham Quarry. To make your views count, send OCC your comments by 7th December.
How to take part in the consultation on the E-planning website: Click or copy the link: https://myeplanning.oxfordshire.gov.uk/Planning/Display/MW.0151/23/ Then click ‘ACCEPT’ at the bottom of the opening page and you will open Application MW.0151/23.
At the top of the page you can choose TRACK THIS APPLICATION- If you fill this in you will be notified of the planning decision. It’s a good idea to complete this. Then select COMMENT ON THIS APPLICATION. You can complete the form online, or write your views in a word or pdf document and upload it. You must include your name and address. Alternatively you can email your comments to Case Officer, Mary Hudson, at planning@oxfordshire.gov.uk. Include your name and address, and state that you wish to be notified, & wish to be listed as a ‘consultee’ in any future planning consultations on Wicklesham Quarry.
The e-planning page has suggestions (below) on issues you may want to comment on, but you can include any you think are important:
- Size and scale of the buildings
- Character and appearance of the development in relation to the setting
- Impacts on the environment and local community
- Access arrangements, parking and impacts on traffic
Signing the petition to PROTECT WICKLESHAM QUARRY FROM DEVELOPMENT
You do NOT have to make a donation (‘chip in’) in order to sign up. Donations go to Change.Org, not to the campaign. Instead, you can ‘share’ the petition on social media or as a link in an email. You do not have to support any other petitions. Just click ‘Skip’ in small letters at the bottom of the page. Once you have verified your email address and ‘shared’, you are signed up and will receive automatic updates. This is by far the best way to keep up with the news. Please don’t make donations in the belief that they help the campaign! I’m afraid they do not. (They help Change.Org to promote petitions.)
Today I want to address details of the application itself regarding NUMBERS. Tomorrow I will address the Applicant's Ecology Report (inaccuracies and missing data). Over the coming week I will post updates on things I feel are important. What you choose to comment on should be the things that matter to YOU. (There's no right or wrong way to object!)
Do the maths and count the cars!
The application is for 42,283 square metres of floor space for office, light industry, general industry, warehousing, possibly including a data centre (referred to in all previously submitted documents). Two multi-storey carparks would provide 440 parking spaces. As the site has not been sold, and ‘all matters are reserved’ apart from access, we do not know how the space could be distributed.
If the space were divided equally between general office use, light industry, general industry, data centre and warehousing, it would accommodate around 1,560 workers.* If a third was used as office space (& the rest divided equally), the number of workers on the site would be over 2,000. The number of parking spaces proposed is less than (or barely) a quarter of possible/ likely workers on the site. (*Employment Densities Guide, Homes & Communities Agency 2010.)
Access to the site would be a few yards from the roundabout at the junction between Park Road and the A420, and it is proposed traffic would be able to turn right across the flow of traffic both into and out of the site.
QUESTION! Do the applicants propose to make it COMPULSORY for everyone in Faringdon to work in their industrial estate?! And to cycle to work, rain or shine? This summons up images of nineteenth century mining or mill towns, where everyone depends on a single employer! Either that, or the applicants know that between 1500 and 2,000 or more workers will drive from Swindon, Oxford and elsewhere, and will queue along the A420 in both directions, waiting to turn into Wicklesham Quarry! Either way, the picture this paints is so ridiculous as to be laughable.
When the Vale of White Horse District Council refused to include Wicklesham Quarry in its Preferred Options Report (2009), it stated that Wicklesham Quarry was ‘far in excess’ of Faringdon’s needs until 2029- the twenty year period of the plan. The council rejected Wicklesham Quarry once more in 2013 and yet AGAIN in 2016 for inclusion in the current (2031) Local Plan. Faringdon Council set out to flout the District Council by handing over its ‘employment land’ policies to the owners of Wicklesham Quarry.
Both Faringdon Council and the applicants are fully aware that this proposal is in conflict with the strategic policies of the Local Plan. They are seeking to rely on Faringdon Neighbourhood Plan- which cannot make policies for strategic development sites.
MORE TO FOLLOW! Contact: protectwicklesham@gmail.com