Somone is standing to make a shed load of money. Take a look at the Reading Road in Winnersh in particular. Many properties have/are replaced with high occupancy dwellings. And people wonder why the traffic gets worse. (If anyone mentions the Winnersh 'relief' Road, they will get a tickle)

   If the Greens were in at a National level at least large influential donations would become illegal and we could be confident that decisions were made for the best interest of the community, not the few with business ties. At a local level you can be sure of Greens too as developers don't fund them.

   And now having looked at the plans, I see the following points

- there are 10x4 bed houses, 11x3bed houses, 7x2bed houses, 5x2bed flats and 3 "coach houses" (a house over some garages).

- there is either 1 space in front of a garage, or 2 spaces for the 3 and 4 bed houses and the coach houses. Usually the former.

- flats and 2 bed houses have 1 space

- there is 1 extra disabled space and 5 visitor spaces

- #10's space appears to be a disabled space, yet this belongs to a "coach house", which is upstairs. Seems a strange policy. Even the provision of disabled spaces seems strange when the demand is unknown. I know disabled people need more parking provision, but how do we know spaces where they have been provided are useful?

- #17 has an extra space (I'd make this one the second disabled space if it is legally required).

- the plan involves the loss of about 6 parking spaces in place beside #6 suffolk close, without saying where these will be replaced.

I would say that as modern garages are never big enough for cars any more, and most 4 bed houses have 2 to 3 cars, there will be a glut of cars parked around this mini-estate. But as this is consistent with current planning guidelines, the council probably can't really reject it.

   @Asif - whilst houses become more expensive, and therefore smaller to remain affordable, people still want cars (usually more than one), and their guests bring cars too, especially in areas such as this where there is little alternative. I'm not against car ownership, ie I'm not saying it is the preserve of the rich. I'm saying it should be expected that with home owners come cars and space for cars must be provided in any new build.

If you reduce the price of property through a lack of car parking spaces, you must enforce the rules of no cars because they won't self-enforce and the neighbourhood will become choked with parked cars, which is unfair on those that already live there. Equally, those who move in to such houses can't say they can't afford a house big enough to come with car parking, and then expect to park a car there. Just like owners of terraced houses in West Reading cannot expect to own two or three cars per house. They just don't fit.

To park 2 or 3 cars, you need about the same footprint as a modern 2-3 bed house. So do you build 2 houses without car parking, or 1 house with? Money pushes the latter, but you'll end up with a mess. Every developer knows how many cars they will get, but they also know that if they reduce this "expected" number, then they can build more houses and make more money. They do this by writing some guff on the planning application about "alternative transport" and "walking and cycling routes", plus the great joke one about "car pooling" that never, ever works to any great significance. They never see the pain caused by the actual number of cars that show up, and would even blame the council for failing to implement the things they set out in their "alternative transport plan". (cf Plough Lane and the removal of the 190 Bus, which the council was powerless to stop). The trick is to spot this on the planning application, and ensure that the right number of houses are built.

If you build houses, you must make *sensible* provision for parking spaces, or actively prevent the people in those properties from cluttering up the neighbourhood around it that already exists with cars.

The Parks in Bracknell is a prime example where they have crammed in houses into a new build, and failed to properly accommodate the number of vehicles that would come with the house owners. The result is a huge number of cars parked on pavements, and the area generally covered in parked cars, making it quite difficult at times to take vans and refuse lorries around the estate.

If the houses are a reasonable size, and there is sensible provision for car parking, my points have been taken care of. 34 houses in the space of just two, when they originally applied for 36, but without looking at the plans, I would guess they might be going with just 1 space or fewer per house, which isn't enough for what will *actually* arrive.

   I've checked out the plans... quite a big development. The article is slightly misleading, I feel - what's being demolished is one home (6 Suffolk Close) and a range of farm buildings and agricultural land. Shame to see it go really, but I suppose it's inevitable that the gap between Woosehill and Bearwood Road will be filled-in eventually; just surprised that we haven't built a through road already.

   Damiano - You can see the application for yourself on the WBC website - ref F/2012/0173 - I haven't got the ruler out but they seem to be reasonably spaced out and a similar size to existing houses in the area.

   Asif Ganesh, who's that directed at, and what's your point, my friend?

For the record, I live in a tiny flat I can barely afford, look forward to local and national government one day building enough houses to meet the country's needs, and if I had a spare couple of million would probably try to do exactly what this plan is going to do, because it will make a quick buck.

   Not all of us can afford massive houses with massive gardens! Im aware that this is news to most anti-development wokingham types...

   Hey Fed up.

So will the be replacing 'The Chestnuts' too? it looks like a big block of flats, as opposed to a couple of houses... And judging by the size of the other houses in the street (on Google maps), it looks like you could fit 10-20 properties on there... the new places must be pretty small...

   Damiano - If you look at the site on Google Maps or search for the planning application on the WBC website you will see that The Chestnuts has a very large garden (far larger than modern houses) and therefore this does not seem to be as ridiculous as it first seems.

   Will this involve selling off any green space out there? I can't see how they'll crowbar 34 homes onto the previous site of 2?