Your letters...

Safety concern for EV points

Editor, — I am writing to express my concern about the lack of support for electric vehicle (EV) drivers in Henley.

On Tuesday last week, I charged my car at the Mill Meadows car park — the only 50kW charger in Henley — and I have never felt so vulnerable.

The area was pitch black. I had to use my phone as a torch just to see and plug in my car. As a lone female, this felt extremely unsafe.

While I appreciate having access to a faster charging station, the absence of lighting and security measures shows a lack of consideration for user safety. This is not just an inconvenience — it is a barrier to EV adoption.

The government’s Zero Emission Vehicle mandate requires 28 per cent of new car sales to be electric in 2025, rising to 80 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035. Already, more than 1.7 million fully electric cars are on UK roads and 22.4 per cent of all new cars sold this year are battery electric. Yet Henley has only a handful of public chargers and Mill Meadows is the sole rapid option locally.

Safety is a real concern. Best practice for EV charging sites includes adequate lighting, surveillance cameras and visible placement to protect users and prevent vandalism. These measures are simple but essential.

I am committed to driving an electric car and supporting the Government’s climate goals but I feel unsupported by both Henley Town Council and the Soha housing association. My company is willing to pay for a home charger, yet Soha refuses permission, leaving me no choice but to use public facilities that feel unsafe.

If Henley wants to lead on sustainability, it must ensure EV infrastructure is not only available but safe and accessible for everyone.

I urge the town council to install proper lighting and security at Mill Meadows and publish a timeline for these improvements. — Yours faithfully,

Tracey Lynch

Address supplied

Henley Town Council responds: “Henley Town Council takes all concerns about public safety very seriously and we appreciate Tracey raising this matter. We would like to reassure residents that there is existing lighting at Mill Meadows, including a lamp column positioned directly beside the EV charging points. However, in light of this report, our parks team will carry out an immediate check to ensure all lighting in the area is fully operational.

“We would also like to highlight that CCTV is installed at Mill Meadows, providing additional security for users of the car park and the charging facilities.

“Henley’s EV infrastructure has been recently upgraded and there are now public charging points both at Mill Meadows and at Greys Road car park, helping to expand accessibility for residents and visitors.

“We remain committed to improving the safety, usability, and availability of EV charging in the town, and we thank Tracey for bringing this to our attention.”

Consultations insult Henley

First we lost the war memorial hospital (renamed Townlands Memorial Hospital), then the front desk at the police station and now it would appear our fire station may be closed. We cannot allow this to happen.

Henley is an historic town, with continuous terraces of listed buildings.

The population at the census in 2021 was 12,186. Since then, several new houses have been built as per our Henley and Harpsden neighbourhood plan. The population of Henley and surrounding areas such as Shiplake has increased significantly.

This so-called consultation is an insult to Henley residents, shopkeepers, businesses and restaurateurs who pay high council tax and business rates.

The online internet meeting is unsatisfactory and we deserve to be heard at one, if not several, meeting(s) at the town hall.

The whole process is rushed and not properly thought out and neglects the needs of Henley residents and businesses. — Yours faithfully,

Diana Duggan

Rupert Close, Henley

Plans ignore high flood risk

Editor, — Planning application P25/S3436/S73, submitted to South Oxfordshire District Council, seeks to remove a fundamental part of the granted permission P24/S0673/FUL, specifically condition nine, which states: “A surface water discharge to a Thames Water recorded foul sewer will not be permitted under any circumstance.”

The district council now proposes to remove this protection and allow surface water from the Ivy Cottage development to discharge into an already overwhelmed Thames Water sewage system, further contributing to pollution and flooding. This could set a precedent for all developments in our area.

This development originally received a holding notice from the council’s lead drainage officer due to serious land-drainage concerns.

Despite this, the planning officer pushed the scheme through (P24/S0673/FUL).

Since approval, multiple attempts to remove conditions have been refused, a “stop notice” has expired and a “breach of condition notice” SE25/175 remains in place — yet building works have been allowed to continue. The council now appears to see connection to the already overburdened Playhatch sewage pumping station as its only way out.

Our MP, Freddie van Mierlo, and local councillors are fully aware of this.

Thames Water is obliged to provide drainage services. However, this development cannot naturally discharge surface water and is seeking to divert it into the foul network. That network is already at breaking point.

I have lived in Dunsden Green for more than 33 years and have witnessed first-hand the worsening flooding in our area.

This is not an anti-development objection. My own family previously explored purchasing part of this land to build a modest three-bedroom home for my daughter’s family. The issue is not development — it is overdevelopment and the severe drainage consequences that follow.

The Playhatch pumping station is regularly overwhelmed, with flooding becoming more frequent. The nearby Dene Close development has already made matters worse by blocking natural surface-water pathways, as highlighted in the JBA Consultants report.

Photographs taken before and after excavation show the Ivy Cottage site to be naturally waterlogged. The ground level has since been significantly lowered, meaning displaced groundwater will only intensify surface-water pressures.

The proposed hydro-valve is no safeguard. It can restrict flow only up to its design capacity and includes a manual bypass that would allow unrestricted discharge into the foul sewer.

Residents in Playhatch are genuinely frightened. During the last flood, a mix of surface water and sewage came within inches of entering homes. To increase pressure on an already fragile network — in a changing climate with increasingly saturated ground — is simply unacceptable.

I urge readers to examine planning application P25/S3436/S73 and lodge objections via the district council’s online planning portal. This decision will shape our rivers, our villages and the area’s flood resilience for decades to come. — Yours faithfully,

John Goldsmith

Dunsden Green

Cut benefits if raising taxes

Sir, — Labour has sadly always been the party of the shirkers and not the party for the workers.

I am sure the electorate understands that the country cannot just spend, spend, spend without revenues coming in.

Tax rises are inevitable, however with those there should also be benefit cuts. Why should those working for a living to make ends meet be penalised, while those taking advantage of the state’s largesse remain unaffected?

As a pensioner in my 70s on the state pension I have to pay my own rent, council tax, energy bills, food and any other living expenses out of that. Forget holidays, the latest gadgets, large screen TVs, eating out or taking taxis to go and do the shopping at Tesco.

Such luxuries are really only for those who do not have to pay for their own living.

There are pensioners who are well set up, but that does not mean that all pensioners are.

For those of us on the lower scale, freezing the personal allowance has a huge impact. Whatever we get in pension we have worked hard for, even if in lower-paid and not-so-glamorous jobs.

Some of us would probably have been better off staying at home and letting the state provide. — Yours faithfully,

F Pryce

Station Road, Henley

Unitary system cost dilemma

Sir, — Central government has decided that in order to improve efficiency and cut costs, the present system of two-tier local councils in Oxfordshire should be replaced with a unitary system i.e., one council only per area (apart from parish and town councils).

This makes sense and is to be welcomed. What is disappointing (but not surprising) is the reaction of councillors and local government officers at each of Oxfordshire’s local councils.

In every case they have put forward proposals based on saving their own organisations rather than what is best for the public. Oxfordshire County Council has proposed a single unitary across Oxfordshire where its own responsibilities are extended and the district councils and Oxford City Council are abolished.

The district councils have put forward proposals where they merge into two unitary councils (roughly one north and one south) and the county council and city council are abolished.

Oxford City Council has put forward a proposal based on expanding its boundaries into rural Oxfordshire, abolishing district councils and the county council and having two unitary councils mopping up the remaining territory in the north and south.

Once the three proposals have been submitted to central government at the end of this month, a consultation will be launched in early 2026, with a decision after the local elections in May. Elections to the new unitary authority, or authorities, will take place in May 2027, with the new structure going live in April 2028.

As local councillors and local government officers are not speaking with one voice, we rely on central government in London to make this critical decision about our lives here in Oxfordshire — are we confident they will make the right choice? — Yours faithfully,

David Bartholomew

Mill Lane, Shiplake

Letters sent from Auntie

Sir, — Stamp it out. A second class stamp for a regular letter is 87p these days. Last year it was 85p. That’s quite a lot if you have to send many letters out regularly, a big part of your or anybody else’s budget.

So, it beggars belief that any company would voluntarily send out 72 million letters in a year (2023/2024). That’s
£61.2 million.

But, under a Freedom of Information request, that’s what the answer revealed.

And who sent all this mail last year? The BBC.

Seventy-two million demand and threat letters. Now why, when most companies have changed to a virtually free digital system of billing and reminders, would the BBC still put out mail? No idea, perhaps it has nothing else on which to spend licence payers’ money, like decent programming or honest reporting. I certainly haven’t watched or listened for that matter to any BBC-produced output for quite some time.

But then, when you were taught to think for yourself and do proper research, you would have realised a long time ago that Auntie Beeb had lost her way and become biased, hypocritical and worthless. That’s why millions have turned away, switched off and cancelled their payments.

There is so much more free content out there, both informed and entertaining, that a diet of repeats just becomes unpalatable and, if I wanted to pay someone to tell me lies, I would go to Soho or Amsterdam and choose my own pleasurable deception. Remember £61.2 million is a lot of money from viewers’ pockets.

Take care of each other. — Yours faithfully,

Edward Sierpowski

Henley

Local plan is overlooked

Editor, — I was quoted in the article titled “Plans to demolish house and build two criticised”. The quotes were from the planning statement I wrote, as the architect.

When the Kidmore End Neighbourhood Development Plan 2011-2035 was published in September 2022, it named no less than 19 authors, who had spent more than four years surveying local opinions on what sorts of houses were needed in the group of villages which includes Kidmore End.

They wanted more small, open-market, semi-detached houses for families. In terms of appearance, the late Victorian Dysonswood Farm Cottages were mentioned favourably in the Tokers Green study.

I have great respect for the people who gave up time and effort to produce that neighbourhood plan and I followed its lead. But I am afraid the hard work of those 19 people was wasted — no one on the parish council seems to want architects to use the document to guide their designs for the village.

The safety of having two entrances rather than one is a technical matter dealt with by Oxfordshire County Council, which accepted two entrances.

The value of two semis rather than one bungalow seems to me to be something where you ought to look to the neighbourhood plan. — Yours faithfully,

Cornelius Kavanagh
(architect)

Fair Mile, Henley

Helping house Ukrainians

Sir, — I see you published notice of our planning application (Standard, November 14) and thought you might like to know the reason behind this application.

At the outbreak of the war in Ukraine we were asked to help house the Ukrainians. This was set up in this area by Dr Krish Kandiah, who approached us asking us to allow Ukrainians to stay in our studio. This is a single room over our garage with a shower room.

We were delighted to help and housed a mother and daughter for a year and were paid by the council. They have both remained firm friends.

After they found more suitable accommodation we then allowed a single lady to stay and she has been staying in the studio for more than a year.

We were therefore very surprised to receive notification from the council that we should apply for temporary change of use permission to allow her to stay. She is hard working and quiet and causes absolutely no problem to anyone, yet someone has complained. So, at considerable expense, we have applied for this temporary change of use.

We hope that this permission will be granted so allowing her to stay as she would not be able to find affordable accommodation in Henley, where she works and contributes to our country.

She is going through enough worry with all that is happening in Ukraine where she has close family without the turmoil to her life at the moment.

Earlier in the year I was invited, with others, to No 10 Downing Street and we were thanked by the Prime Minister for housing Ukrainians and yet this is the thanks we get from our local council! – Yours faithfully,

Antony and Rosemary
Duckett

Marlow Road, Henley

Remembrance is worldwide

One of your letters last week said that Mayor Tom Buckley was wrong to widen Remembrance beyond British nationals. However, Mayor Buckley’s speech is well supported by facts.

At the beginning of the Second World War, the British Government called upon the British Empire to help defend us against Nazi Germany and its allies.

In response, more than five million people, from India/Pakistan (2.5 million), Canada, Africa, Australia, the West Indies and New Zealand fought with us and for us. Many of them died or were wounded.

Remembrance Day now is to remember all of those who supported us in those world wars and in more recent conflicts.

We will remember them — all.

M Hankinson

Henley

Seasonal signs have gone awry

Sir, — Two snowdrops in the garden today (November 18). — Yours faithfully,

Enid Light

Wargrave Road, Henley

Thank you for help with car

My car suffered a clutch failure outside your paper's office on Wednesday and two people, Wesley and Catherine, plus a firefighter out of your shop came to my rescue.

They pushed me across the lights and helped me ring the breakdown services and then insisted on buying me a cup of tea while waiting.

They even rang me later the day to see if everything has turned out all right. What good people we have living in Henley. — Yours faithfully,

Mr MJ Trendall

Clements Road, Henley