ACT NOW – Submit your objections to the van storage planning application

Two planning applications have been submitted by Savills for the area near the Spade Oak Nature Reserve: one on behalf of Buckinghamshire Council to delay the return to nature of the area by 5 years and one on behalf of Modul-Systems Ltd for a commercial van parking and storage development.

Please respond to both planning applications by 4th March via the links above. Don’t forget to register your stance as OBJECT.

We encourage everyone to write their own text and reasons, but here are some salient points to consider:

• There is no reason to postpone the required restoration by a further 5 years, other than to allow the van parking application to be approved. There appears to be no clear management plan going forward and the restoration should have been enforced by Bucks Council and carried out by the previous landowner.
• The site is a known valuable wildlife habitat for protected species. Insufficient surveying has been undertaken or information gathered, to accurately protect or mitigate for the proposed development.
• Further delays in the investment and enhancement of the Country Park area, will cause a loss of opportunity for the local community amenity value and provision for green open spaces to promote health and wellbeing.
• The commercial van parking and storage development contravenes policy RUR4 in the current Local Plan adopted in 2019, and is inappropriate development in a Green Belt area. No special circumstances have been demonstrated. The claim that this is effectively “brown field land” because Bucks Council hired it out to a filming company last year is misleading! If these applications get approved they will contravene national and local planning policy.
• For the van parking and storage, the claim there are no alternative sites is untrue and unsubstantiated.
• Any development with fences, lighting and security presence, plus the continuous traffic will pose risk of significant harm to the protected wildlife on the site and in the adjacent nature reserve.
• The alleged benefits funded by the development are vague in description, costing and timing – and there is little track record to demonstrate that either the applicant or Bucks Council will deliver on it.

Don’t forget to write to your Bucks councillors, especially Cllr J Towns, Cllr D Johncock and Cllr D Watson, to ask them to oppose this planning application!

Thank you very much for taking the time to do this – the more objections, the better! Once the land is built on, it will be lost forever.