Waltham St Lawrence

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Extract from Maidenhead Advertiser

Parish council recommends new gypsy plans for refusal

About 100 people packed into a meeting of Waltham St Lawrence Parish Council last night to discuss resubmitted plans for a gypsy site in Shurlock Row.

Parish councillors at the meeting at Neville Hall in Milley Road unanimously voted to recommend the plans for refusal after two applications were submitted to the Royal Borough in December to site static and touring caravans at Five Oak Farm.

The Royal Borough rejected an application in 2010 and 10 gypsy families living on the site were given until February this year to leave the site.

Speaking after the meeting, parish council chairman Clive Scott-Hopkins said: "We opposed this latest application on the basis they are very similar to what exists there at the present time."

Link to source document: http://www.maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk/News/Areas/Walthams/Parish-council-recommends-new-gypsy-plans-for-refusal-09012013.htm

Waltham St Lawrence Parish Council response

12/03541 & 12/03428 Five Oaks Farm

Object: these ‘change of use’ applications which are retrospective do not change the situation which exists, namely that the Appeal against enforcement action failed in the Secretary of State’s decision in August 2011 on harm to the Green Belt occasioned by ‘visual intrusion’, ‘loss of openness’, ‘encroachment into the countryside’ and ‘clear conflict with guidance on flood risk’. Further, ‘that very special circumstances do not exist to justify development in the Green Belt even for a limited period of time’. This is supported by ‘Planning Policy for Traveller Sites’ published in March 2012 to be read in conjunction with the NPPF (‘as with previous Green Belt policy, inappropriate development is, by definition, harmful and should not be approved’). Accordingly, these similar situation applications should be rejected by the Borough.

It should be noted that the scale proposed of 17 caravans and 17 vehicles already exceeds what currently exists on the site

Link: http://www.walthamstlawrence.info/images/stories/documents/five%20oaks%20farm%20january%202013.pdf