This year has been dominated by the need for more and better drainage and made notable by several controversial planning applications.
Your Council’s efforts to improve drainage throughout the parish have largely succeeded: long blocked drains have been cleared both by the County’s team and by a private one hired by your Council. Gullies have been dug out, again partly by the County and partly by our own new team, on Gillotts Lane, Chalk Hill, Woodlands Road and Perseverance Hill. Without this work flooding would have been much worse than it was this very wet Spring, though this clearance of drains and gullies will need to be repeated on an on-going basis. Fortunately we can reserve funds to pay for it from our access to the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). This money will also help pay for the new drainage works that are needed at or near the key point where Gillotts Lane runs into the foot of Chalk Hill in Harpsden Road – sometimes known simply as ‘the village street’.
None of the controversial planning applications mentioned at the outset has been of more concern than the replacement of the derelict barns at Lucy’s Farm, which of course overlook the key point for a new addition to the drainage system. After a great deal of discussion between your Council, village residents, the SODC planners and the developer (Jamie Smith), it has been agreed to replace the barns with 3 small houses linked together and made to look as barn-like as possible on the road side, which will remind us of the barns that were shown to be there over 400 years ago in John Blagrave’s map of the Harpsden Court Estate in 1586.
Apart from two unwanted planning applications in the Wood at May’s Green, the most controversial has probably been that at Jerry’s Barn on Upper Bolney Road. This was in no way an historic site: indeed it began as the site for a caravan well after the 2nd World War and was expanded surreptitiously over time into a large bungalow with a chicken house in which the last owner claimed that people lived. Happily he sold to a new owner who has wanted to build a single house and was prepared to take account of your Council’s views on size and bulk in particular. Ironically, at the time of writing he still had to convince the SODC Planners but we expect he will.
Readers will also want to know about the larger-scale developments along the Henley-Reading Road, all of which we opposed in vain against the Government’s Planning Inspectors.
The largest project, Taylor Wimpey’s bid to put 95 houses on Thames Farm, is still stalled by the company’s failure to find an acceptable way either to fill the voids in the chalk subsoil – perched as it is over the local aquifer – or to drain water from the site.
The second largest project, at the old Wyevale Garden Centre, is now going ahead with 44 houses, while the one nearest Woodlands Road, at Crossways, also has the support of the Government’s Inspectors for 11 more. In our view, both schemes will impinge on the amenities of the area.
Two other possibilities call for comments: village gates and the enlargement of the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, or AONB, which is now to be renamed as National Landscape.
Owing partly to the help of our admirably active County Councillor, David Bartholomew, we could install white gates as a means of calming traffic. Because the entrances to Harpsden parish are scattered and diverse, the only place where they might be effective is on the central core from Harpsden Court to the bottom of Gillotts Lane but would it be worth “ gating” the core alone? Residents’ opinions would be very welcome. As a separate exercise I hope to convince my colleagues that we should mark the road boundaries of Harpsden with simple road signs.
Finally, we have been taking part with our neighbouring parishes in a joint effort to get the AONB extended, in our case to include the northern slope of Harpsden Valley and Harpsden Park, since the Golf Course, Harpsden Wood and Harpsden Court are already AONB, – or what we must now call “National Landscape”. Ideally the area would include the meadow between Rook Hill, Sheephouse Lane and the A4155, half of which has been flooded for the last several months.
My sincere thanks to my fellow Councillors for their many insights and frequent technical help, as well as to our Clerk, Anne Marie Scanlon, who has had to learn more than any of her predecessors to keep up with new bureaucracy.
Kester George
Chairman, Harpsden Parish Council April 2024