A brownfield site refers to previously developed land.
Ladygrove Cottage, next to Hartwells (car dealership), has been demolished and a 3-storey building is being built. It will contain four 1 bedroom and two 2 bedroom apartments and parking for 7 cars.
A few doors down, near the Caldecott Road roundabout, another house, the one that used to have two stone lions on the gateposts, has been demolished. I have not seen plans for redevelopment yet.
The Ferry Boat Yard, off the Wilsham Road, will now have 3 new residential units consisting of one 1 bed, one 2 bed and one 3 bed house and car parking.
The Tesco Garden Centre will be a 86-bedroom hotel. It was not visible from Marcham Road but is now.
Sounds like the developers are busy.
The house with the stone lions was the home of the manager of the Wilts and Berks Canal, which entered the Thames just there. Why wasn’t it protected? Have the lions gone too?
it was an old people’s home more recently.
not sure there was anything about it that required protecting really, just a big house.
The Poplars planning permission is approved for 8 new flats on 3 floors, 11 parking spaces.
Planning permission for the ‘stone lions’ site on Drayton Road was given in June 2019. Although, as pointed out, the only work done so far has been to demolish the house and clear the site. Permission has been given for a three storey block of eight flats, with some parking spaces.
There is a difficult balance over these sort of developments. We definitely need more small homes for people starting on the housing ladder, particularly those taking up jobs in this area, and replacing a larger home, not built to modern standards, with some smaller, well-built ones, may be a better use of the space. Squeezing tiny dwellings on to a corner plot, as is happening in housing estates all around the town, is more questionable: these often have very poor amenity provision (outdoor space, cycle and bin storage etc) and can have a significant effect on the quality of life of the existing residents. Conversion of modest family homes to HMOs (houses of multiple occupancy) is even more questionable: again there is a balance between the needs of new and existing residents, complicated by the profit motive of the developer. Parking and traffic are often cited as problems: if the developments are close to bus and cycle routes, this may be less of an issue in future as younger generations are less wedded to the car, but again it is a fine balance.
Planners need to balance all of these factors and ensure that new developments create good quality accommodation. Sadly recent legislation has removed many of the controls which enable them to do that.