News

‘Garden grabbing’ powers welcome

June 17, 2010

Tougher powers to prevent garden grabbing housing developments have been welcomed as “music to our ears” by Wokingham’s lead councillor.

The announcement is too late for the hundreds of residents whose objections to planning applications to build new homes on gardens failed to prevent proposals going ahead over the last 12 years.

However, the announcement by housing minister Greg Clark last Wednesday gives hope for the future that Wokingham Borough Council will have powers to prevent infill development on existing residential sites.

Councillor David Lee, leader of the council, said: “This music to our ears.

“We have been trying to do that for many years.”

One of the main activities of Wokingham’s local residents' associations and action groups is to fight back garden development.

Paul Gallagher, chairman of Emmbrook Residents’ Association, said: “We have consistently opposed ‘garden grabbing’ mainly because there is usually insufficient, if any, additional infrastructure, road improvements etc, that comes with it, or affordable housing.

“Along Reading Road, for example, there have been a number of separate developments of this type over recent years that if built together would have necessitated a certain number of affordable houses and money for road improvements and major drainage systems. So, we get the extra pain without any gain.

“The environment suffers too. These gardens often contain mature trees and support a wide range of wildlife. When the gardens are built over we lose all this and piece-by-piece our neighbourhood changes from a pleasant leafy suburban area to urban traffic-choked sprawl.”

Figures show the proportion of new housing on previously residential land in the borough was among the highest in the south east in Wokingham over the last few years.

Between 2001 and 2004 in Wokingham, 48 per cent of new homes were built on previously residential land and between 2005 and 2008 this type of development accounted for 43 per cent of new homes built.

The borough suffered the most from these types of applications in 2007, when 54 per cent of new homes built were under “garden grabbing” schemes.

In Bracknell, the figure between 2001 and 2004 was 39 per cent and between 2005 and 2008 30 per cent.

Reading suffered less from the infill problem, with 19 per cent of new homes built on gardens and existing properties from 2001 to 2004 and 27 per cent from 2005 to 2008.

The new coalition Government has announced it is changing the classification of garden land from brownfield, so councils and communities can put forward stronger arguments to have planning applications refused.

Cllr Lee is a former chairman of the council’s planning committee, which was either forced to approve back garden development as councillors had no laws to legitimately throw out the plans or lost appeals overseen by the planning inspectorate.

One of the council’s key motivations for producing the Core Strategy, which sets out where new homes and infrastructure will go in the borough by 2026, was to prevent infill development.

Cllr Prue Bray, leader of Wokingham Liberal Democrats, said the new powers for council sounded good on paper, however more details are needed to firm up what they will mean for Wokingham.

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late announcement for the hundreds of residents

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adam

adamgilchrist
17/06/2010 at 12:24

late announcement for the hundreds of residents

adamgilchrist
17/06/2010 at 12:21

The knee-jerk reaction and pejorative labelling of infill developments as "garden grabbing" is classic narrow-minded "I'm all right Jack" nimbyism. It restricts housing supply and forces all development onto large estates on greenfield land, as we see with WBC's new Core Strategy. Such estates put far greater pressure on road infrastructure and other services than incremental additions to the esisting useage patterns. The large developers will then cram the private housing as tight as possible in order to be able to afford all the new schools, roads, "affordable homes" and so on that they are obliged to provide.

I see no problem with infill development provided it is in keeping with the existing housing stock and the access arrangements are simple and not too intrusive. Old houses were often built with very large gardens that are virtually allotments, and these are often much too big for modern tastes, hence the tendency for mono-culture gardening where people just plant conifers and shrubs to keep maintenance to a minimum. Many modern gardens are not the diverse ecosystems that Mr Lee sentimentally claims. I regard this new policy as a disaster for people who don't want to live on large anonymous cramped housing estates, and for small construction businesses that want to build pleasant, attractive designs in sympathy with their surroundings. The whole of Wokingham is being handed over to the large developers and landowners, and the people who want to ban all infill development will just sit smugly in their little bunkers and say "out of sight, out of mind" as regards the cramped clone housing that is going to be built in Arborfield, Shinfield and on the borders of Wokingham. Shame on them.

The problems that Cllr Lee refers to are because some developers were allowed by WBC's own Design Guide and its S106 tax, which encourage the building of 1- and 2-bed housing, to build very tightly on small plots. If WBC changed its Design Guide and made 3- and 4-bed houses less expensive, then the poorer quality infill housing would be discouraged. Small developers have no incentive to remove trees and spoil the character of their developments unnecessarily, and anyway WBC's own Environmental department is incredibly tight on such things, slapping on Tree Protection Orders whenever it feels like it. If large trees are being cut down, the Council only has itself to blame, as it has plenty of power to stop this, if it chose to do so.