Author: SMG

At the 10th November meeting of the Little Marlow Sewage Treatment Works Liaison Committee, the issue of the film studio planning application was brought up. While the minutes have yet to be published, the report from the Bucks Free Press was not pretty:

Andrew Scott, Thames Water’s Head of Waste Treatment for Thames Valley Region said he was not sure what the “absolute maximum” that the sewage works could take was, adding that someone at the water company “will be looking at that”.

He continued: “What I do know – from my operations perspective – is that unfortunately we tend to be playing catchup rather than getting ourselves ahead of the game.”

Not a particularly encouraging response for the Borlase rowers who will be out on the water nearby!

The recent rain also emphasised that this area is most useful as a flood plain rather than for warehouses. This video from 9th December shows the state of the A4155:

If you like your Thames clean and your houses not flooded, continue to object to the film studio application.

The data shared following the Freedom of Information request contains a lot of illuminating information.

For example, this email from February 2023:

The email shows black on white that councillors from Marlow Town Council met in private with Dido Property Limited at Westminster. Is it any wonder that Cllr Scott quoted liberally from their promotional material in his statement?

The behaviour of MTC in this case, as directed by Cllr Scott and Cllr Funnell, can be summarized as:

• Meeting with Marlow Bottom Parish Council? – No
• Meeting with Little Marlow Parish Council? – No
• Meeting with Save Marlow’s Greenbelt? – No
• Meeting with Marlow residents? – Only if we have to, but we won’t engage or listen to them.
• Meeting with developers in the Westminster? Yes please!

Who are these councillors representing?

Remember the Parish Meeting on 17th October, when a vote was taken that Marlow Town Council should formally object to the planning application? The residents voted in favour of this statement. Cllr Scott then said “I have made a note of that”.

However, following a question from a resident at the Town Council meeting on 24th October 2023, it appears he has lost that note. The minutes state:

Q: Following on from the recent Parish Meeting, how have members aligned their comment regarding Marlow Film Studio planning application, to those of Marlow residents?
A: We have outlined how the data was assimilated.

Q: Is the Council going to act on the votes taken at the Parish Meeting?
A: No instruction has been received from Council therefore no.

Perhaps Cllr Scott needs to be reminded where his note went? You can reach him on rscott@marlow-tc.gov.uk.

We have produced a new A4 flyer, which you will start seeing around Marlow and will be delivered to all households over the next coming weeks. It clearly and visually spells out the truths and implications of the film studio application. The purpose is to get more people engaged and properly informed. They also make lovely posters when folded out, if you have window space available.

You might also see them as larger boards around the town, mounted on a cargo bike. If you want to help with distributing flyers or talking to the public alongside the cargo bike, please contact us.

The principles of the Greenbelt won this month. Government minister Lee Rowley has upheld the rejection of plans to build England’s largest data centre in Iver, Buckinghamshire, between the M25 and an industrial estate, citing the need to protect the green belt.

Another article on the topic notes:

The availability of alternative, non Green Belt, sites was therefore a critical issue. The SoS unsurprisingly agreed that development would harm the Green Belt purposes of checking unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas and safeguarding the countryside from encroachment

(…)

(…) the Inspector and the SoS accepted the Council’s line that while there is locational demand, the ‘need’ (i.e. at a London and UK level) could be met on sites in Availability Zones with land outside the Green Belt. The developer had not carried out such a wide-ranging assessment of alternative sites.

Now that sounds familiar. Definitely a strong warning to Dido Property Limited for their film studio application. This ruling should give Buckinghamshire Council’s Strategic Sites Committee confidence that if they refuse the Marlow Film Studio application, that there is a good chance that the Secretary of State will uphold their decision.

After our report a few months ago about the impact of actor strikes in the US, a new article in The Guardian features interviews with former UK film industry workers, who are needing to find jobs elsewhere.

Freelancers, the majority of people working in the industry, are hard hit through a combination of Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikers, drops in ad spending and a fall in commissions from domestic broadcasters and international streamers.

The Bectu union, which surveyed almost 4,000 UK TV & film freelancers, recently found three-quarters are out of work, 35% are struggling to pay household bills.

That’s hardly a sound economic case to invest in an oversized studio on Greenbelt land, is it? It ties in with the Knight Frank report. Buckinghamshire Council’s Strategic Sites Committee should do the right thing and follow its Planning Officers recommendation: refuse the film studio application.

We wrote about the trials and tribulations of residents near the Leavesden film studio in the past, but they recently made the news again. Locals living by the film studio where Harry Potter and Barbie were filmed say it’s like being in the middle of a “war zone”.

“When they’re filming war movies we get the rat-a-tat-tat crack of machine gun fire in the middle of the night. Then one night there was a huge bang and my TV aerial fell off as cracks appeared in the ceiling. It’s ludicrous. They have absolutely no regard for their neighbours. We get guns firing and huge explosions at all times of the day and night.”

Do you want to be in this situation? You can continue to object to the Marlow film studio application.

Below is the objection statement given by Cllr Sam Kershaw from Little Marlow Parish Council at the Bucks Strategic Sites Committee on 23rd October.

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The studio bubble has peaked.
This development isn’t needed.
And its local and national economic benefits are negligible.

Over the last ten years, companies like Netflix and Amazon grew the streaming market by spending billions producing original TV content.
Britain’s film industry benefited hugely.
The spending on UK content doubled between 2016 and 2022. 70% of this spend came from streaming companies.

This created a huge demand for studio space.
Industry insiders anticipated the demand.
They expanded existing studios such as Pinewood, Shepperton and Leavesden. And built new ones such as Wycombe Film Studios.

Then property developers got in on the action.
So much so that planning consents for film studios increased by 45% in the last five years
It became a gold rush.

In the background, the streaming market continued its rapid growth.
Many new services were launched.
And content budgets increased by over 25% per year. All funded by cheap money.
Everyone was wildly optimistic even though they were making huge losses.
A classic tech bubble.

This year, it began to burst.
The market is now reaching saturation, revenue growth is stalling and the cost of debt has rocketed.
After all, there is only so much money that people will spend on TV and film.

Streaming companies are now prioritising profitability over growth.
So their production budgets are being slashed.
Disney recently reduced its by 5.5 billion
This isn’t a blip caused by Hollywood strikes – this is the industry maturing and adapting.

Consequently, the demand for UK studio space has been significantly impacted.
Knight-Frank recently reported there is now enough to meet foreseeable demand.
Expansions of established studios such as Sunset in Hertfordshire are already being scaled back or cancelled.
And the outlook for new studios is looking very bleak.
Particularly those that don’t yet exist
Especially the large ones
The days of “build it and they will come” are over.

Marlow Film Studio is late to the party. The champagne has gone flat and the dancing partners have all been taken.
Bucks’ economic consultants, LSH, have already cast doubt on their forecasts for studio demand.
Now, they are so out of date they are clearly implausible.

The applicant’s economic case for the studio’s benefits depends on these forecasts.
Estimates for Employment, GVA and Tax Contributions are all based on occupancy rates.
The justification for these estimates was already weak and lacked any consideration of risks or dependencies.
Recent developments have made them even more open to doubt.

Would you invest your own money in this development?
I wouldn’t.
And Buckinghamshire shouldn’t allow its valuable greenbelt to be invested either.
The benefits are doubtful and the harm is certain.
Therefore, I strongly recommend refusal.

The Strategic Sites Committee meeting on Monday 23rd October considered the film studio planning application, which its officers recommended for refusal. You can watch the recording online.

The planning officer started with a summary presentation of the development, adding that irrespective of new additions to the traffic proposals, the harm to the Greenbelt and local area would be unjustified.

Objections to the development were presented by Cllr Johncock, Cllr Watson, Cllr Wilson (Bourne End), Cllr Kershaw (Little Marlow), Cllr Pleming (Cookham) and SMG’s Richard Sherwin.

This was followed by odd and contradictory statements to the application from Robert Laycock and public supporters, which the chair allowed far more time than objectors.

In the end, several councillors, including Marlow’s Neil Marshall, voted to defer the decision to obtain more information on traffic and SAC, despite this being immaterial to the planning officers recommendation. This clearly panders to Dido Property Limited, wasting more officers time on tax payer money, while leaving local residents in limbo about their future. A very irresponsible decision.

Our fight against this development continues: there is no economic argument to build such a large film studio on Marlow’s Greenbelt. This is the only argument that matters. We will publish the speeches of the opposition over the next few days.

The film studio planning application will be considered by Buckinghamshire Council’s Strategic Sites Planning Committee at its meeting, starting at 1:00pm on 23 October 2023. The Committee will be held in The Oculus at The Gateway, Gatehouse Road, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, HP19 8FF.

Members of the public are welcome to observe the meeting but the seating is limited. However, the meeting will be available to watch via a livestream broadcast on the Buckinghamshire Council website.

You can see the agenda and documents online here. The officer’s report is the first document on the list. While still accepting some of Dido Property Limited’s wishful thinking at face value, the officer’s recommendation to the committee is to refuse the application.

The proposal will lead to very substantial harm to the Green Belt adversely affect the setting of the Chilterns AONB and landscape character of the area. The impact on the highway network and the environment is substantially negative. Overall, notwithstanding the benefits of the scheme taken together, it is considered that the
benefits do not “clearly outweigh” the Green Belt and other harm. The applicant has not demonstrated ’very special circumstances’ to justify inappropriate development in the Green Belt for the purposes of paragraph 148 of the NPPF.

We can only hope that the councillors (including Marlow’s Neil Marshall) on the committee follow the advice of the officer.