Campaign against Gladman in Eye & Dunsden

Thanks to over 180 generous donors and contributions from parish councils and local amenity groups, the CAGE crowd-funding appeal has raised an astonishing total of around £16,000. This is when online and cheque donations are added to the £6,000 donated by local parish councils. As a result, CAGE has been able to appoint John Fitzsimons as our barrister to act at the planning inquiry from 1 to 4 May. He specialises in planning and has been involved in some notable cases invol

CAGE has launched its fighting fund to pay for its battle against Gladman Developments in May. Will you help us accumulate sufficient funds to pay for expert evidence to prove just why Gladman's objectionable appeal should be rejected? Nearly 500 people registered their objections to Gladman's plan for 245 unsustainable houses in tiny Eye & Dunsden Parish, next to Emmer Green. If each of them contributes just £20 we would meet out £10,000 target. Please help us. Gladman boast

GetReading has reported on the spiralling cost of providing new school places in the Borough, in the light of a 44% rise in pupil numbers over 2010–2018. According to the report, each new primary school place in Reading costs on average a massive £23,579. The Gladman development would theoreticaly fall within the catchment of Shiplake primary where potential pupils have been sent to distant schools because of the shortage of places. CAGE estimate that it would cost around £1.

Our MP John Howell visited the Gladman site this afternoon and pledged to work with Reading East MP Rob Wilson to support the CAGE campaign against 245 unsustainable houses in the Chilterns landscape close to Emmer Green. At the meeting at Bryant's Farm, he heard that if the houses are built they will place an intolerable burden on local schools in both Reading as well as South Oxfordshire, where primaries are already struggling to cope with an influx from Reading's hard-pres

SODC's Planning Officer has confirmed the Gladman application is unlikely to go to committee until April at the very earliest. Water supply, archaeology and infrastructure are being worked on, with further reports expected. A trial archaeological exploration is currently underway on the site. Planning committee meetings are held fortnightly and alternate between Crowmarsh and Didcot. Given the strength of feeling locally, CAGE believes that SODC must send the Gladman applicat

The Government’s new white paper on planning was published today and is out for consultation. The white paper makes bold promises: Making more land available for homes in the right places, by maximising the contribution from brownfield and surplus public land, regenerating estates, releasing more small and medium-sized sites, allowing rural communities to grow and making it easier to build new settlements; Maintaining existing strong protections for the Green Belt, and clarif

As reported in the Henley Standard, Councillor Paul Harrison has criticised his own Planning Department in the strongest possible terms: “The planning department is too large with too many officers who are more interested in seeing developers as their customers rather than the residents of South Oxfordshire. “They’re looking out for their own jobs and throwing the rest of the district away.” He added: “Too many of the councillors go with the officers every time.” Cll

Click on the image to download a PDF poster you can print out and display. #Dunsden #Gladman

Hedges add character to the local landscape and provide significant habitat for wildlife. The Gladman plan requires the loss of a long stretch of hedgerow to provide access from a dangerous stretch of the Peppard Road, just beyond the pond to the left of the picture. Last minute information filed by the applicants just before Christmas shows how a long length of hedge will be torn up on both sides of the road as part of the application. Trees will also be lost to create new b

At its meeting on Monday 16 January 2017, members of Sonning Common Parish Council’s Planning Committee voted unanimously to recommend SODC reject the Gladman application. Their submission is below: Refusal of the application is strongly recommended on the following grounds: The proposed development would occupy a significant part of the Strategic Green Gap between Sonning Common, Emmer Green and Eye and Dunsden. This green gap provides vital separation not only between these