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Why do we want to keep the field?
Here are a few good reasons
Please email me with your reasons to keep the field and comments
- The Anson Field is very special to all who live round it
- The terms of the 7th August 1913 Declaration of Trust (Anson Trust terms
of reference) give them no powers to sell land
- How many of us bought our houses BECAUSE of the lovely green field just
behind safely protected (or so we thought!) by the Anson Trust for the benefit of the village?
- Howard Cornish Road is already too congested with bus routes, parked cars
and drivers avoiding "The Bends" it really can't take any more
traffic from housing built on the Anson Field
- Children in the surrounding houses have somewhere safe and close to play
without having to cross busy roads or stray more than a few hundred yards
from their front doors, how much space will be left for them after the building is finished
and how will the new residents react to children playing football in their
smaller smart new "green area"?
- A field on the Northern Edge of the village will not be accessible for younger
children in the same way as the Anson Field
- It will mean years of noise and disruption during building and loads of construction
traffic right in the middle of the village
- Someone will have to have their house knocked down to allow sufficiently
wide access to the proposed new houses - or does the plan involve someone selling
off most of their garden to create an access onto the field - or will the
school have to go first?
- How can they stop the developer who gets their hands on the land from
building 150 houses - they will want to make an adequate return on the many
millions of pounds they will have to pay the Trust for the land
- The school will not be big enough for the additional influx of children -
this will also have to relocate to the edge of the village
- Parents will start to drive their children to the school in the new
location in view of the increased distance from the Southern part of the
village causing more rush hour congestion
- The Anson Trust are likely to fall foul of The Local Plan with such a
large development in the village - they are wasting their remaining cash on a
fruitless planning exercise and the only winners will be Dialogue, the
planning consultants
- Arthur Anson took a keen interest in the Cricket Club and would not have wanted
their historic home dug up for housing
- "Marcham in the '90s - A village appraisal" is full of survey
results proving how important to the villagers the Anson Field is
- Please email me with YOUR reasons to field@scilutions.co.uk
Here are just a few of my own concerns as a householder along Abingdon road -
our houses are at a substantially lower height than the Anson Field:
- It can only harm property prices for those houses backing on to the field,
after all the Anson Field was a great attraction when I bought
- Building on the field may cause increased run-off into our gardens (no
more Newnham Courtneys here please!)
- There is already a problem with land from the field slipping down into our
gardens, any building work disturbance will only make this worse
- Even a low rise development will create significant overlook owing to the
difference in levels between the Anson Field and properties along Abingdon
Road
Footnotes
The 2011 Local Plan lists Marcham under
policy H11 - NOT MORE THAN 15 DWELLINGS WILL BE PERMITTED
Moreover it further stipulates i) THE SCALE, LAYOUT, MASS AND DESIGN OF THE
NEW DWELLINGS WOULD NOT MATERIALLY HARM THE FORM, STRUCTURE OR CHARACTER OF THE
SETTLEMENT; AND ii) IT WOULD NOT RESULT IN THE LOSS OF FACILITIES IMPORTANT TO
THE LOCAL COMMUNITY, INCLUDING AREAS OF FORMAL OR INFORMAL OPEN SPACE.
The Anson Field development proposals are in every way contrary to policy H11
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