The developers who reduced the town centre to a ghost town are the SAME ones now trying to build on Wicklesham Quarry SSSI, and after that, the whole of Wicklesham Farm.
The economic collapse of Faringdon Town Centre since 2018 is a direct result of Faringdon Town Council’s determination to allocate ‘employment land’ IN EXCESS of what the town needs or could use. The 10 acre 4&20 site, the Council decided in 2006, would create a “high quality employment site” on the corner of Park Road and the A420. So in 2006, Faringdon Town Council “put pressure” on the District Council to allocate “a big increase” in employment land in the 2011 Local Plan.
Immediately after, Faringdon Council began to campaign to have Wicklesham Quarry allocated as well. The Minutes state “pressure should be put on the District Council planners to change the local plan again”. (Faringdon Town Council Planning and Highways Committee Minutes 20 July 2006).
The so-called '4&20 Business Park', advertised for sale between 2006 and 2014, failed to attract a buyer and was never built. The site was sold for development as a retail park, exploiting Para 127 of the National Planning Policy Framework, which advocates using land for other purposes where there is “no reasonable prospect of an application coming forward for the use allocated in a plan”.
The applicant for retail planning permission in 2015 was none other than dodgy developer Geoffrey Spencer Cooper, who claimed that edge-of-town supermarkets in Faringdon “would not have a significantly adverse impact on Faringdon town centre”. Faringdon Town Council DID NOT OBJECT to this application. (You can see the planning application at the link below.)
Faringdon town centre has become a ghost town.
Within a year of Waitrose and Aldi opening on the edge of Faringdon in 2018, Budgen, the town centre’s only supermarket closed, with the loss of over 50 jobs. Seven years later the large Budgens store site remains empty, and, like a house of cards collapsing, numerous town centre businesses followed. Most disturbing is the fact that almost all of these premises remain unoccupied - some have now been empty for years. Faringdon town centre is an economic desert – even on market days. The lives of numerous small business people have been ruined and many local people have been made unemployed. (SEE THE LIST BELOW)
Faringdon Council and the District Council bear a heavy responsibility for allowing this to happen. However ultimate responsibility lies with those who turned a fat profit from this employment land scam, with no thought for those who paid the price, or the impacts on the town: the dodgy developer who has set his sights on Wicklesham Quarry, and the owners of Wicklesham Quarry and Farm - who also owned the 4&20 site.
Not content with having asset-stripped the town once, they intend to try to do it again.
While the owner of the 4&20 site was selling her land for building supermarkets on in 2014, claiming there was ‘no demand’ for a 10 acre employment site, she continued to sit on Faringdon Neighbourhood Plan’s Employment Land Group, writing fictional justifications* for allocating 29 acre Wicklesham Quarry as employment land- also owned by her own family.
In her leading role in Faringdon’s Chamber of Commerce, she was lauded as the champion of Faringdon’s efforts “to address the chronic lack of employment land in the town”. This was in 2015, shortly after she sold the 4&20 site claiming it was not needed.
While the Chamber of Commerce praised this local landowner’s “unstinting efforts” “to address the chronic lack of employment land” – they apparently "failed to notice” that her "unstinting efforts" invariably INVOLVED SEEKING TO ALLOCATE GREENFIELD LAND owned by her or members of her family, for new, highly profitable uses, regardless of what those uses turned out to be.
Members of Faringdon’s Chamber of Commerce were either completely blind or totally indifferent to the reality of what local landowners and developers were up to in Faringdon, as well as to the fact that they were given a free rein by Faringdon Town Council.
Nothing could be LESS TRUE than the claim of the Chamber of Commerce in 2015 that it would “strive to protect the interests of all commercial activity in the town”. The exact opposite has been the case. But then maybe we should not be surprised - since its president was a solicitor whose client list is largely made up of property developers!
The REAL costs of Faringdon Council’s actions and those of the landowners and developers with whom, since 2006, they have been closely involved, have been paid by local businesses and residents of Faringdon, who have seen the town progressively deteriorate from the inside out.
- Employment options have reduced, not increased
- Numerous local businesses have failed
- The historic centre has become an economic wasteland, with empty buildings at risk of falling into dereliction
- Faringdon’s potential to attract visitors has disappeared
- Town centre residents have to drive to the outskirts of the town to do a weekly shop
These are the inevitable consequences of excess land allocations, unplanned development, and a Town Council that handed control of a neighbourhood plan to local landowner/ developers, to write policies for their own land that THEY KNEW were in conflict with the strategic policies of the Local Plan.
Faringdon Council has become so deeply enmeshed in the ambitions and strategies of these developers, they no longer have any idea how to disentangle themselves.
The death toll of Faringdon’s town centre
Following Budgen’s closure in 2018, Lloyds TSB, the town’s last bank, closed. A restaurant in the town square that had been there for decades, closed. Delicatessens (Hare in the Woods, Manna Deli) and specialist caterer, coffee shop and food retailers (Sadlers) have closed. The town’s second butchers shop has had two successive businesses, both of which closed after a year or two. The Bell Pub, one of Faringdon’s most important historic buildings, has had two separate owners since 2018, both of whom left. The Volunteer has closed permanently, and the Red Lion - which has been in existence since the 17th century - is going to be converted after several different owners failed to turn it around. What is most devastating for the town is that NONE OF THE PREMISES MENTIONED ABOVE HAS SINCE BEEN RE-OCCUPIED by new businesses. THE CENTRE OF FARINGDON IS NOW A GHOST TOWN.
All of this can be traced to the opening of two chain supermarkets on the edge of Faringdon, which Geoffrey Spencer Cooper claimed: “would not have a significantly adverse impact on Faringdon town centre”. When local businesses are sacrificed to the ambitions of a local developer and landowner, maybe those who pay the price should be able to claim damages for their substantial losses? If that were the case, councils and developers might pay a lot more attention to the consequences of their actions.
- The flawed document Our Faringdon Our Future, written by the owner of the 4&20 site, formed part of the neighbourhood plan's Evidence Base. It was rejected by the Vale of White Horse District Council in 2016 as a justification for including Wicklesham Quarry in the Local Plan 2031. You can read more about it here: https://www.change.org/p/the-vale-of-white-horse-district-council-and-secretary-of-state-michael-gove-protect-wicklesham-quarry-from-development/u/32141218
- Planning application for the 4&20 site: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://democratic.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/documents/s27103/P15V0394O%20-%20Land%20at%204%20and%2020%20site%20Park%20Road%20Faringdon%20-%20report.pdf
In the next update, read about the bogus claims of dodgy developer, Spencer Cooper in his planning application relating to Wicklesham Quarry SSSI.
REMEMBER, YOU CAN STILL OBJECT TO THE PROPOSAL FOR A 33,500 SQM DEVELOPMENT AT WICKLESHAM QUARRY.
SEND YOUR OBJECTIONS TO mary.hudson@oxfordshire.gov.uk. Your objection will remain anonymous, but remember to include your name and address.
WICKLESHAM QUARRY NEEDS THE SUPPORT OF LOCAL PEOPLE!
If you wish to see any documents referred to here, or to send any queries or comments, please get in touch by email to protectwicklesham@gmail.com