Jane Ripley
Recently I went to the Save Sandrock Bends campaign, who held a public meeting on the proposed development of the beautiful and biodiverse site on the corner opposite the Conquerors March on The Ridge, for where an Outline Planning Application has recently been made.
I went on behalf of our group Standing up for Nature who have been supporting the Sandrock Bends campaign, and it was very well attended, with the pews in St Helens Church pretty much all filled. I’m informed by the organisers that there were around 250 people present.
The informative presentation told us all about the campaign so far, showing us the developers plans for 65 houses, mostly four bed detached with garages, so not exactly all that impactful in terms of meeting affordable housing need locally. We then saw alternative plans for fewer houses with a higher percentage of social housing from the architect speaker who we introduced to the campaigners at the SU4N event last year.
The developer proposes to put an enormous pond on site to cope with the extra runoff, when challenged on this they added the idea of a borehole to take excess water below the clay and release it to… well, nobody actually knows where. The likelihood is that it will then reappear anywhere between The Ridge and the town centre, adding to existing flooding and serious land movement.
Additionally, a local resident identified on the day that there is an aquifer under the site which really can’t make it an ideal prospect for building on, maybe the Victorians avoided it when the Ridge was developed for that very reason?
Sandrock Bends also has areas of extremely rich biodiversity, and is a vital wildlife corridor to the Weald, allowing the movement of fallow deer, dormice and many other important species of plants and animals into St Helens Woods and down into Alexandra Park. Wildlife corridors allow genetic transfer and are integral to the survival of other pockets of green space through the town.
There is also no extra provision for schools or GP spaces, and the residents would be car dependent in an area which already struggles with high traffic flow and regular jams and roadworks.
The main takeaway is to follow their social media (I will pop their posts on our Facebook page too) to see what needs doing, how and when. They are having a drop in session on Sunday 18 May.
Right now we need to each register our opinion to the outline planning. The campaign recommend that you make your comments personal to you and specific on the aspects of the development that concern you.
It’s really important that we all also contact our councillors to explain our feelings on this and also to register our objection to the development as soon as possible.
Deadline is 23 May so please don’t put it off, it only takes a few minutes and you can make separate comments if you feel you don’t get enough space on one.
