Minutes of the ANTAS Meeting, held at the Tilbury Hall,

Potters Bar on Saturday 21st April2007

PRESENT: Dr Peter Diplock, President, Tony Fooks, Chairman, John Davies, Vice Chairman, Andrew Sangster Hon. Secretaryand Alastair Maclean, Hon. Treasurer.Also present were representatives of the Aylesbury, Buntingford, Chesham, Chiltern, Harpenden, Hertford, High Wycombe, Hitcham and Taplow, Hitchin, Marlow, Potters Bar, St Albans, Welwyn Garden City, Welwyn Planning and Wendover Societies.

APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE: These were received from Ian Morgan and Diana Wethered, Vice-Presidents, John Egan, EEACTS, David Peevers, June Hutchinson, Evelyn Rowe, Ron Sims, and the Amersham, Beaconsfield, Bishop’s Stortford, Buckingham, HughendenValley, Oxford and Radlett Societies.

WELCOME:Members were welcomed to the meeting by Arnold Davey on behalf of the Potters Bar Society and its Chairman, Teressa Travell. The meeting sent its best wishes to Teressa Travell on hearing that she had been taken ill the previous day. Arnold noted that the town had two ‘high streets’; the original developed on what was at the time the Great North Road, the second some fifty years later on Darkes Lane around the new railway station. There was a massive building programme with a high proportion of bungalows in the 1920’s and 30’s followed by a further doubling of dwellings post-WW2. The Potters Bar Society comprises autonomous topic groups with a supervisory committee made up of the chairmen of the various groups plus Society officers. The town is surrounded by Green Belt, so the principal concern is the redevelopment of existing residential sites, often grouped together, to high density, out of character with surroundings, and in some cases in the form of large blocks of flats. Horace Tilbury owned a teashop and bakers on the High Street and was a local philanthropist. He donated the land used for the original cottage hospital and the land for a community hall, the venue for this meeting.

MINUTES OF THE LASTMEETING: The minutes of the meeting at Wendover on 22nd April 2006were approved and signed by the Chairman as a true and correct record.

MATTERS ARISING: There were none.

CHAIRMAN’S REPORT: The Chairman presented the following report:

“It is now 5 months since my last report but to me it seems only 5 weeks. The Executive Committee has met recently to review the activities that have taken place and those that are on-going. I am pleased to report that the Members’ Officer listing on the web site is now up and running and I understand from the Secretary that it is being used. Some of you who have been involved in the East of England Plan have now contributed to the response to the Draft Plan, based on the EiP Panel’s report, published for final consultation by the Secretary of State. During the last few months some of us have also been involved in the South East Plan, namely Oxford, Marlow, Chiltern Society, High Wycombe Society and ANTAS itself. This will be reported on separately. ANTAS has contributed to the Civic Trust survey on “How successful have Local Strategic Partnerships performed?”. It would appear that our comments are in line with the rest of the Civic Trust affiliated societies in the country in that they are poorly run and not representative of the public/amenity sector. This is now being reviewed by Government and a report is to be issued shortly. Many of you have shown interest in the topic of the talk at the last meeting, climate change, presented by Penelope and Michael Tollitt. Some of you have had further discussions within your own groups so anyone interested in joining a wider group to be set up by Michael Tollitt should contact me. I hope you have all seen a copy of our excellent Newsletter produced by Merrin Molesworth – a big thank you to her. I know Merrin would only be too pleased to receive contributions to future editions, so don’t be shy. The Executive has also made comments concerning putting Britain’s heritage up for sale and also the protection of its heritage features. In addition we also joined with English Heritage and the 20th Century Society in condemning the proposal to de-list the Commonwealth Institute for reasons of profit. I hope you have now seen the Baker Report; the Executive will be supporting the Civic Trust in this matter. The Executive has debated the question of how big the ANTAS area should become, as we would not wish to become as large as a region of the Civic Trust. I would hasten to add that we will not turn away interested parties on the fringe of our two counties, Bucks and Herts, as we already have such members. Finally I have pleasure in announcing the date of the next Annual General Meeting, which will take place on 13th October. This will be hosted by The High Wycombe Society and the venue will be the BuckinghamChilternUniversityCollege at the invitation of the Director, Dr Ruth Farewell. The speaker will be Cllr Mike Appleyard on the subject of the South East Regional Assembly, how it was formed, who sits on it and its activities. Please make a note in your diaries now. Thank you.”

In response to a question it was noted that the Members’ Officers listing on the web site is password protected and the password had been circulated to respective Chairmen and Hon. Secretaries.

THE TREASURER’S REPORT: The Hon.Treasurer reported that membership still stood at 22 with reciprocal subscription arrangements with the Chiltern Society. Two members had been excused subscription payments this financial year because they had joined immediately prior to its start. He expected the Association’s finances to break even this year and in response to a question confirmed that current income covered the costs of the Newsletter and operating expenses. It was noted that the Newsletter Editor and the Secretary were conducting a survey of members to find out whether they would like to receive additional copies for their own members, and in what form, and also whether there are other bodies the Association can seek to influence through circulation of the Newsletter. It was confirmed that all copies of the Newsletter are posted on the web site.

REPORTS ON REGIONAL SPATIAL STRATEGIES:

South East England - Examination in Public

Chiltern Society:

The Society argued against a wide-scale review of the Green Belt, whilst accepting small-scale alterations might be considered at local level, and for identification of strategic gaps to prevent creeping development damaging important natural features. They also supported AVDC’s plan for a green belt between Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire. The Society played a leading role in seeking a specific policy framework to protect the River Thames corridor and highlighted the need for measures to protect heritage towns from environmental impacts such as commuting HGVs, and ‘High Street’ cloning. The Society opened the debate on Aylesbury Vale arguing for early development of the proposed East-West rail link between Oxford and Milton Keynes, and against policies that could increase out-commuting over the Chilterns to the M4 corridor. The relat6ionship between employment and housing and the measures needed to attract knowledge-based industry were addressed. Finally, the Society, together with the local authorities opposed the inclusion of parts of Wycombe and South Bucks district in the Western corridor for housing purposes.

High Wycombe Society:

The debate on the infrastructure requirements in the Western Corridor and BlackwaterValley sub-regiontook place on 28 March. We had two issues to pursue:the transport links serving High Wycombe, and the over-abstraction of water which is causing our watercourses to run dry.In fact High Wycombe did not feature very prominently in the discussions. There was a lot of concentration on south of Reading, and on the rail project known as “Airlink” where the developers are demanding generous planning permission in the Bracknell/Wokingham area in return for building a new rail link from Staines to Terminal 5 (“hostage planning” the LPA said!).

Transport - We were reassured beforehand to find that on transport, we were largely singing from the same hymn sheet as the County Council, so Tony Fooks slotted in behind them.We were particularly concerned to ensure that the map of “hubs and spokes” should be appropriate.High Wycombe has good road links to London and south to the Thames Valley, but it has very poor road links to the north (which clogs up the western outskirts of High Wycombe), whereas of course Aylesbury is supposed to be a growth area and to link up with Milton Keynes and the South Midlands growth area. The A4010 is notorious, particularly since many health services have been moved from WycombeHospital to Stoke Mandeville. We therefore made a pitch for an improved link to Aylesbury from the M40 west of the Chilterns through Oxfordshire. The man from the Highways Agency rather unhelpfully stated that the current M40 Handy Cross junction improvement would be “at capacity when completed” so he didn’t want any more traffic through his junction, thank you very much! Meanwhile, west High Wycombe suffocates.We were even more exercised about the lack of public transport, both to the north and south to the ThamesValley and we pleaded for both those to be improved. An improved rail link to Aylesbury is on the horizon, but nothing to the south, where we’ve been advocating the restoration of the disused railway line to Bourne End and thence to Maidenhead for many years but would happily settle for any convincing alternative.

Water - We were ready to paint a convincing picture of the importance of High Wycombe’s 3 chalk streams to the town’s amenities. All the major recreation areas and parks in the valley take advantage of these but the water is often low and intermittent. Furthermore, the Council has plans to open up the river as an amenity through the town centre. In the event, the Inspector asked, on seeing Tony Fooks’ flag up, if we wanted to make our point about over-abstraction, and that was that! At least the inspector had done his homework, but if we had thought harder, we might have put some more picturesque detail in our written submission!

The outcome - We’ve no idea what success we shall have on all this, but in fact the bad news is likely to be on housing. WDC officers have told us they have every expectation that areas of “safeguarded land” on the fringe of the town will be identified by the Inspector for development, and if not by him then by the Secretary of State.

Marlow Society:

The Society agreed to co-operate with the Chiltern Society and the River Thames Society (RTS) in the EiP.and submitted comments on a range of issues and was invited to participate (specifically at the debate on Matter 2C - Rural, SmallTowns and Built Environment). It submitted further comments on the EiP process and agreed to share its seat at Matter 2C with the Chiltern Society (represented by Mike Overall). It requested a seat (or shared seat) at the debate on questions directly relating to our sub-Region: Western Corridor and Blackwater Valley (WCBV), but was not successful. The Chiltern Society requested a seat at further debate sessions and was successful, extending the influence of the tripartite team. It was decided to submit written comments on several Matters: 2C, 6B.3 (relating to the River Thames Corridor) and 8J (WCBV).

Extensive networking and consultation on matters 2C and 6B resulted in submissions from all three Societies built around common themes. RTS concentrated on links with the Environment Agency (EA) which is responsible for the River Thames but whose organisational size had resulted in previously weak submissions. Chiltern Society is also a member of the SE Forum for Sustainability (SEFS) and focused on the countryside stretches of the Thames in our area. Our Matter 2C submission included support of Natural England (a new Government agency that has replaced English Heritage, Countryside Agency and the Department for Rural Affairs). The Society argued that the Plan has missed an opportunity by focusing too strongly on urban regeneration and housing allocations across the Region.

At the EiP covering both Matter 6B RTS and Chiltern Soc. had seats; and for Matter 2C - Marlow Soc “shared” a seat with the Chiltern Soc, but there was space for both to participate concurrently. Both sessions went well exceeding expectations but still meeting resistance to change from SEERA officers.
Matter 6B.3 (River Thames): two alternative draft Policies were tabled - one by RTS (with backing of legal advice) and the other by Chiltern Soc (with support from SEFS, NT, CPRE, NWGA, SE AONBs and Wildlife Trusts). GOSE moved its position to support a River Thames Policy based upon existing Regional Planning Guidance (RPG3b/9b). There was almost total unanimity that the River Thames was inadequately covered and that there should be specific Policies in the Plan. Unfortunately SEERA’s intransigence continued and they stated that a Policy was not necessary. It is hoped that the Panel inspectors’ report will reflect the consensus view and GOSE will accept it.
Matter 2C (Rural): our presentation was requested by the Panel during the debate and received well by all accounts. However, a major concern regarding lack of coverage in the Plan for Green Infrastructure (GI) resulted in much of the debate being centred on this issue. The Panel requested that SEERA produce a Paper on including GI within the Plan which SEERA extended to include the River Thames within their (inadequate) GI Paper.
Written submission made re Matter 8J (WCBV). The Society remains concerned that Wycombe District and other southern parts of Bucks are included in this sub-Region.
The SEERA Paper on Green Infrastructure, with virtually no additional cover for the River Thames, was circulated for comment by EiP Panel. Many written responses point out this shortcoming (alongside improvements to the GI coverage). Chiltern Soc submits a modified version of their draft River Thames Corridor Policy and the EA finally submits a River Thames Policy! RTS submits amendments to the EA Policy so there are now three draft Policies for consideration by the Panel.

ANTAS:

Keith Robinson, Chairman of The Aylesbury Society, represented the Association at the Examination in Public in the debate on the Rest of Oxfordshire. One aspect of this debate specifically addressed the impact that an increase in proposed development in the outer ring of Oxfordshire would have on the proposals under the draft Plan for Aylesbury Vale. Keith noted that although Aylesbury is linked with Milton Keynes it has poor transport connections compared with the latter. At present only the A41(M) provides an acceptable road link. The only rail service is provided by London Underground/Transport for London and has limited scope for expansion. Under the South East Plan, Aylesbury is designated for knowledge-based economic growth, yet in terms of educational establishments it is very poorly served compared with its neighbours, Oxford, Buckingham and Milton Keynes. In addition Buckinghamshire County Council thinks that growth in Aylesbury is not happening, but out-commuting is increasing, mainly to London, in direct conflict with the Plan. It would appear that the only solution that might reverse what is currently happening would be the provision of a high quality road link to Oxford and the reopening of the railway connection to the north of the town, leading to Milton Keynes. The Association concluded that additional development in adjacent areas of Oxfordshire would further damage the prospects for the growth of employment in Aylesbury town and Aylesbury Vale.

East of England:

The Secretary reported that the Association had submitted comments on the draft plan circulated for final consultation by the Secretary of State (see attachment).

OTHER PLANNING MATTERS:

  • The Secretary drew attention to the Planning Policy Statement No.3 (PPS3) on Housing which came into affect on 1st April. It contains several criteria that should be met in the provision of new homes in multi-dwelling developments and these should help to provide ammunition for member societies involved in the preparation of Local Development Frameworks and in responding to planning applications.
  • A proposal in a document titled “Heritage protection for the 21st Century” (see DCMS web site) has recently been published for consultation. This is the follow-up to an earlier consultation on arrangements for listing of buildings and ancient monuments some three years ago on which the Association made extensive comment. The Secretary requested input from member societies to an ANTAS response – the deadline is 1st June.

SOCIETY REPORTS:

Where electronic versions were not submitted bulleted points are noted.