An Extraordinary Meeting of the Environment and Sustainability Committee was convened on 29th February to determine options prior to the resumption of the Examination of the Local Plan by the Planning Inspector.

To see the scope of those options, please go here

The outcome which followed the casting vote of the Chairman was as follows:

The Committee resolved to propose to the Inspector to remove all Green Belt allocations from the Local Plan with the exception of the two allocations that meet the need for Gypsy, Traveller and Travelling Showpeople.

The Committee resolved to propose to the Inspector to keep all proposed flood risk sites but remove those at high risk of flooding and move some higher risk sites to later in the Plan period (11-15 years) to allow the River Thames Scheme to be operational and effective, the design code to be completed, and subject to no resolution objection from the Environment Agency.

The Committee resolved to propose to the Inspector to withdraw the Staines Development Framework as a core document.

We will be interested to see how the Planning Inspector reacts to these fundamental changes in policy; and whether he can allow these resolutions as "main modifications". It's also entirely possible that the Minister of State for Housing will have an opinion following the example of his predecessor, Rachel McLean, with whom the Leader of the Council had a difficult exchange of correspondence.

The next Music Night at Sunbury Cricket Club is on Friday 8^th March and is the now-traditional annual event in aid of The Mayor of Spelthorne’s Charities, featuring the Club's house band, THE CHAIN GANG.

This year’s Mayor is Cllr. Denise Saliagopoulos, a councillor for Riverside & Laleham, whose charities are Daybreak Respite Care at St. Peter’s Church, Staines, and the Jasmine Suite, the Ashford & St. Peter’s Breast Cancer Unit.

As ever, the Club has assembled the great and good of our local musicians collective led by Music Night organiser Paul Watts, under their customary name of THE CHAIN GANG in honour of the Mayor’s chain of office, to give their services free to perform what will be a great night of 60s, rock ‘n’ roll, blues, country and rock classics.

This year’s line-up features Karl Green, the former original and long-time bass player in Herman’s Hermits, along with guitarists Gerry Cook from Matrix, Mark Doyle from the Marshall Taylor Band and Tim Renton from 3AM, plus bass players Martin House from Matrix and Roger Harding from the Thames TV Big Band, drummer Stephane Booroff from Sky High and The Escorts, and formerly with Edison Lighthouse, and harmonica wizard Geoff Forester, who has played with numerous blues luminaries.

All proceeds go to the Mayor’s Charities, and we look forward to a bumper crowd for a fun community night to raise as much as we can for two very good causes.

It's £10.00 on the door payable by cash or card. Hot food will be available as usual from about 6.30pm, and the band will be on stage at 8.30pm.

The Riverside Players announce:

After the tremendous success of our murder mystery last spring, we have another one for you wonderful audiences to solve this April. Come and attend the party thrown by billionaire Elton Jack and inspect the evidence to help solve the murder.

Performances:

Friday 12th April at 7.30pm – dinner is included with each ticket

Saturday 13th April at 2.30pm – afternoon tea is included with each ticket

Saturday 13th April at 7.30pm – show only

The Riverside Arts Centre bar will be open for drinks purchases at all performances.

You can book now at: https://sunburyriversideplayers.org.uk/

As indicated in a previous post on this site, LOSRA was furious that the Planning, Design and Access Statement (PDAS) for the BESS application indicated that our Association was supportive of this ill-conceived enterprise (scroll down to articles of 5th and 8th February). Following our representation to the company, they made the following statement:

“Following submission of the application for Sunbury BESS (Spelthorne planning application reference 24/0017/FUL) the Applicant was made aware of an error in paragraph 1.9 of the Planning, Design and Access Statement (‘PDAS’). The error stated that Lower Sunbury Residents Association had indicated support for the application, which they had not. The Applicant has subsequently updated the PDAS to remove this sentence and resubmitted it to Spelthorne Council, and made the case officer aware.”

Jordan Martin,
Associate at DWD Chartered Surveyors and Town Planners

The RTS is a major engineering project by the Environment Agency and Surrey County Council to reduce the risk of flooding along the Thames between Egham and Teddington.

In addition to two new channels upstream of Walton, there will be additional weirs downstream, including a large one across Sunbury Lock Ait. This will inevitably damage the view from Kings Lawn.

The principal benefits of the RTS are reduced river levels upstream of Sunbury. These are estimated to be up to 90cm in the area of the two channels - but only 4-8cm downstream of Sunbury Lock. This is a minimal amount given recent river level increases.

The proposals include an “active travel” route between Egham Hythe and Walton, including two new bridges at Chertsey and Desborough Island. However this will be of little benefit to Sunbury residents because the continuation of the active travel route is the tow path on the Walton side of the river.

We believe that incorporating our proposed bridge at Sunbury into the project would provide Sunbury residents with a material benefit from the RTS and we will be lobbying hard for this. Without this benefit there is little, if anything, for Sunbury residents to gain from the RTS.

A “consultation event” is being held at the Hazelwood Centre on Monday 19th February, between 1pm and 7pm. We encourage anyone with an interest in this important subject to attend - and to let the promoters know your views on incorporating a Sunbury bridge and on the new weir.

https://www.riverthamesscheme.org.uk/consultation

Further to the article posted on Monday 5th February (scroll down), the following is the text of the Association's letter of objection:

The comments given below on planning application 24/00017/FUL, for the construction and operation of a Battery Energy Storage System (‘BESS’) on strongly performing Green Belt land adjacent to the Charlton Lane EcoPark, are from the Lower Sunbury Residents Association (LOSRA).

LOSRA dissociates itself from the impression given in paragraph 1.9 of the submitted PDAS that it supported the proposed development that was presented to local residents on 19 June 2023. Not only did LOSRA attendees express no such support at the time; LOSRA is now strongly objecting to the submitted proposal for the following reasons:

1. The proposal comprises ‘inappropriate development’ within Green Belt under paragraphs 152-156 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF):

•  The Applicant has therefore put forward a ‘Very Special Circumstances Report’ in order to argue that the application should nonetheless be approved

2. The claimed ‘very special circumstances’ do not justify such approval:

• Whilst the application argues the country’s need for electricity storage in order to manage intermittent renewable generation more effectively, it does not justify using the Sunbury Green Belt site in order to do so.The site is land-locked, with only a single route to the public highway over land owned by others. In spite of claims to the contrary, it is a considerable distance from the nearest Grid Supply point:

• The application points out that a cable route of 2.8km in length is ‘at the end of viability…due to the cost of laying cables long distances’. But the route shown actually measures around 3.5km (on the Surrey CC Interactive Map).

•  It is also claimed that the cable route ‘will avoid any major infrastructure’, and yet it has to cross not only the six-lane M3 motorway but also the Staines Aqueduct – twice.

•  The land-locked site is also surrounded – by the M3, the Shepperton branch railway, Charlton Village, Ashford Common Water Treatment Works, Upper Halliford’s Birch Grove area and the Charlton Lane EcoPark.

•  The application claims to provide ‘support for the rural economy’. This is simply implausible for an operationally unmanned industrial complex on suburban Green Belt with its major components, the 96 battery modules themselves, specified from a Chinese supplier.

•  It is also claimed that the proposed development is ‘temporary’, since it will only last for 40 years and then revert back to nature. That is not only both unenforceable and unlikely, but also of no advantage whatsoever to current local residents.

3. If it were to be built, the BESS complex would represent an unacceptable industrial visual intrusion and extensive health and safety risks:

•  Although the Applicant has provided no drawings showing the actual appearance of the overall proposed BESS scheme, it is not difficult to imagine what 144 industrial containers laid out in rows across the stated 5.9 hectare site will look like; it would surely be irredeemably ugly.

•  It is further stated that the site layout has been amended as a result of advice from the Fire Services and reference to the planning guidance from the National Fire Chiefs Council. This resulted in the battery modules being located further from the M3 motorway in order to avoid the impact of the smoke plume on vehicles in the event of a BESS fire. The site is also required to have 9 large water tanks containing a total of 225,000 litres water to fight the fire. A battery fire is a chemical fire that provides its own oxygen; quenching it requires the provision of huge amounts of water to cool it down over many hours and sometime days.

•  Depending on the wind direction at the time, the smoke plume from such a fire, which would contain a range of toxic gases, might not affect the M3 but rather Charlton Village, Upper Halliford, the Ecopark or, most worryingly, the Ashford Common Water Treatment Works. If it were raining at the time then presumably the toxic chemicals in the plume would wash out into whatever lay beneath.

•  In a similar vein, the large volumes of water being used to quench such a fire would inevitably pick up those chemicals, most notably hydrogen fluoride, and potentially pass them into the water table should the sump manholes surcharge.

•  The ‘Framework / Outline Safety Management Plan’, written by consultants and submitted with the application, might have been expected to provide details of how these fire and other risks would be managed, but it is almost entirely conditional upon the receipt of further information from the Applicant. As such it does not provide the level of detail necessary to make an effective assessment of an intended Full Planning Application.

The next Music Night at Sunbury Cricket Club is on Friday week, 16th February, when the Club welcomes back FIRE & WATER, a band who played one of first Music Nights more than 12 years ago, and who have headlined one of their Beer & Music Festivals in the past.

Capturing the spirit and music of Free, Bad Company and Led Zeppelin, Fire & Water comprise Paul Cox, who Radio 2’s Paul Jones says has “one of the best voices in Europe” and has worked with Ray Charles, Eric Clapton and others; guitarist Mike Summerland, who was with Blodwyn Pig, Georgie Fame and William Bell; bass player Al Maclean, formerly with Kokomo and Hershey & The 12 Bars; and drummer Jim Russel, whose background includes Stretch, Scotty Moore, Curved Air, Desmond Dekker and others.

An evening of top quality rock and blues is absolutely guaranteed, and it will be a classic old school Sunbury Music Night.

It's £10.00 on the door payable by cash or card. Hot food will be available as usual from about 6.30pm, and the band will be on stage around 8.30-8.45.