Jean Saunders from the Richard Jefferies Society has made contact this morning and confirmed that although on the face of it the news looks good, our green fields will never be safe from developers; I have sent her the link to this forum and invited her to join if she wishes. I am sure she will be made very welcome.

This is her message:

Quote:
On the face of it, this is good news. However, I have now read carefully through the full report of the planning inspector and it clearly paves the way for development of the area. I suspect that we will be lucky to get away with a development the size proposed in the Swindon Core Strategy.

I've been fighting to protect this area from development for over 20 years now and my initial elation at yesterday's news was very short lived. For example, the Inspector was satisfied that the archaeological interest would not be jeopardised by the development and he did not accept my argument that the area might be a Neolithic Gateway site and that better linkages should be put in place to protect the various Neolithic features. I didn't have the evidence to back this up - just a strong gut feeling. He did agree that the housing proposed for the land between Coate Water and Day House farm at the northen end of the lake was not acceptable and gave this concern significant weight. The Sec of State agreed with the 3 main reasons for refusal of planning permission. The other two were related to the lack of links between the proposed offices and university and the fact that no site had been identified by the developers for a teaching facility in the town centre. Other than that all our other environmental concerns were not accepted.

End of quote:

June