News

Planning alert for Pincents Hill action group

By Linda Fort
April 21, 2009

Pincents Hill in Calcot is one of the sites proposed for housing in West Berkshire Council’s blueprint for development for the next 20 years.

A controversial plan to build 900 homes on the 48-acre former Calcot Golf Course site owned by Blue Living has already angered locals who formed the Save Calcot Group to fight any development on the green gap behind Sainsbury’s.

Now it appears in the West Berkshire Core Strategy document in two of the five options for developing between 750 and 1,000 houses at the eastern end of West Berkshire.

Absent from the document is another controversial site south-west of Reading in Burghfield where Prudential proposed a 3,500 home development.

The strategy, which will guide all future development in West Berkshire, must first be approved by the West Berkshire Council executive on Thursday and then go through a lengthy statutory consultation.

The plan outlines preferred options for housing and indicates possible sites.

The focus for urban development in West Berkshire would be 1,450 homes in the Newbury Racecourse area and 2,000 either in Sandleford North or Siege Cross.

In the eastern area there are five options to accommodate 750 to 1,000 homes.

These are:

Option 1 – Pincents Hill
Option 2 – land at Theale
Option 3 – smaller developments at both Pincents Hill and Theale
Option 4 – a number of smaller developments in the settlements in the eastern area and adjacent service areas
Option 5 – a number of smaller developments throughout the eastern urban area.

The options for the eastern area will be subject to a further consultation before the council opts for a preferred area.

John Betteridge of the Save Calcot Group said: “I think around 95 to 98 per cent of the people living in the area around Pincents Hill are against any development there. Charles Church tried to develop just 250 houses there around 20 to 25 years ago and everyone was against it.

“It is a lovely area for walking and wildlife and would be a real loss to the area. There are plenty of brownfield sites where development would be more suitable.

“There are also real issues about where the traffic from all those houses would go. There are a number of proposals but some would open up rat runs into residential areas in Tilehurst.

“There is very strong local opposition to any building on Pincents Hill.”

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Building on Pincents Hill would destroy a valuable open space used by local children.

DaveP
22/04/2009 at 21:22

These seem like decent areas to put houses I think without disrupting anything else in the areas.

Burghfield inparticular is underdeveloped and these houses need to go somewhere.

It would be difficult to make calcot look any worse than it does, so all those areas get my vote.