Cement Batching plant

Residents in Emmbrook North may have noticed a new feature on the landscape at Toutley Depot. This is a three storey tall Cement Batching Plant that appeared suddenly in May.

It seems that the owner of this plant, didn’t think they needed permission to put this here. Thankfully, Wokingham Borough Council now disagrees. Planning Enforcement is normally taken against the land owner, but in this case that is Wokingham Borough Council, who see it as a pointless response to take action against themselves.

Toutley depot is leased it to Sita and Sita have sub-let some space to a third party owner. The terms of the lease do require Sita to comply with the planning rules. We are now at the mercy of Wokingham Borough Council chasing a breach of lease involving a third party who have signed no agreement with them.

In the mean time, four months on, residents are not seeing any movement of this ‘blot on the landscape’. The depot has the rights to operate 24 hours a day and it means there extra trucks in the neighbourhood. I am pretty sure the residents of the new houses that are being built won’t appreciate its presence either.

I raised this as a ward issue at Full Council on Thursday 21st September. Lets see if we can get some movement.

I sent the following letter to the Wokingham paper:

My foot showing the shallow kerbs on Broad St

With all of the millions that the Wokingham Borough Council is spending on Wokingham Town Centre regeneration, there is one important group that seems to be being overlooked.
That is bus users, especially those with mobility problems. The bus stops on Broad Street are central to the town and are a vital service for accessing local services, such as the doctor’s surgery on Rose Street, local banks and shops.

The kerbs in Broad Street are well below the national standard and are largely only one or two inches tall. This makes the step up into the bus quite high, even when the bus is ‘kneeling’ and many of our less able passengers find that step very high, especially when they are carrying shopping.

With wheelchair users it is possible to deploy a ramp, but that is quite steep, it takes time to operate and it causes a significant delay to the bus departure.

If the kerbs were raised to meet the bus, wheelchair users could roll right onto the bus with everyone else along with prams, shopping trolleys and people with heavy suitcases and it could be done quickly and without a fuss or any special treatment for anyone.

These raised kerbs are being deployed everywhere to meet this need, except in our Town Centre bus stops.

I was told in the Executive last week by Cllr Chris Bowring, the Wokingham Borough Council executive member for highways, that to raise the kerbs in Broad Street would be physically impossible.

This is because of the entrance thresholds into the properties are quite low and drainage would be a problem.

I disagree – difficult, yes – impossible, no – this is a ROAD we are talking about. If we can send people to the moon are we suggesting this could never be sorted out on Broad Street?

If our Council is serious about complying with its Equality Duty and meeting the obligations of the Equality Act, it needs people who can think through these problems and make it work for all of our community and it should not be overlooked when we are spending so much money on regenerating the Town Centre.

Vehicles parked on pavements

Many people will have seen the modern housing estates that are being built around Wokingham. Once people move in we have cars stacked on the pavements and parked in unusual places, making it unsafe for pedestrians and cyclists. In Wokingham we have the highest car ownership of any council around us. This is as a result of where people work vs the lack of good public transport to get you there. But, yet the ‘Wokingham Plan’ allocates only 0.5 car parking spaces per single bedroom flat and of course this is the standard that developers will work to.

The reality is, even a single bedroom flat will probably have one working person in it and quite likely two. It often takes two incomes to get a mortgage or pay the rent. These residents will quite reasonably want as space for their own car and they may even want people to visit, especially if the live on the edges of the town. I really don’t think our developers care that much about the long term quality of life for the people in these places. 

At this point I am not able to do very much to protect the Green spaces that have already been allocated for development, but I can do my best to make things better for the people who will live there and those that have to live with the consequences. Good parking provision is up there, high on my list.