Developer looks to cut homes at farm

A DEVELOPER which wants to build over an aquifer that supplies drinking water to Henley and Shiplake wants to reduce the number of homes on the site.

Taylor Wimpey has already been granted planning permission for 95 homes at the former Thames Farm, off Reading Road, Shiplake, but it has submitted new plans to build 84.

The firm says the reduction is necessary to ensure the site has adequate drainage after it found the land to be unstable and vulnerable to sinkholes.

It has already had a bid to inject grout into the ground to stabilise it rejected by South Oxfordshire District Council, the planning authority, and the decision was upheld by the Planning Inspectorate on appeal.

But Taylor Wimpey is now proposing a new drainage system, which includes a basin on the western part of the site which it says will ensure there are no off-site impacts relating to surface water.

The site is in an area designated as a source protection zone by the Environment Agency as it lies above a chalk aquifer which feeds potable water to Henley, Harpsden and Shiplake.

As well as a reduction in the number of homes on the site Taylor Wimpey has pledged to upgrade the house types across the site to make them more energy efficient. It says the design includes consideration of the longer-term impacts of the changing climate.

Peter Boros, who chairs the Thames Farm Action Group, believes the new drainage plans would cause significant interruption to local residents.

He said: “Taylor Wimpey is endeavouring to manage their surface water run off by collecting it on site, storing it in two huge concrete tanks and then pumping it back across the site to a large balancing pond where it will presumably be expected to filter back into the site and the underlying water table.

“One wonders if with the huge engineering costs involved and the disruption and inconvenience that the area and its residents will face, as to whether the whole project should be reappraised and perhaps they might be better considering a very low-density development of large houses built around a balancing lake.

“Whilst this is a different way of recovering a lot of their investment in this site, that investment is long gone and there comes a time when reappraising historic bad decisions and changing the direction of travel makes rather more sense than trying to fix something that is as problematic as the original concept for Thames Farm.

“That concept was ill conceived, not properly reviewed at the time of due diligence, and inadequately planned and thought through from the outset.

The district council will make a final decision by Monday, November, 18.