Outstanding Successes in Challenging and Shaping Planning Proposals.
At the Hill Farm Inquiry the Society was the only body to draw to the attention of the Inspector that the proposed development would significantly affect the integrity of the Yateley Common Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Although that appeal was refused, primarily on access grounds, environmental considerations were not deemed important planning considerations in 1982. Some 14 years later in 1996, the Society played a major role in the Cobbetts Lane Inquiry for the same site. This resulted in the first planning decision in the country to refuse an application from the standpoint that the housing development would significantly affect the Yateley Common SSSI which is now a Special Protection Area (SPA) for wild birds under European legislation.
The Society identified the significance of the wet heathland bog at Castle Bottom which led to its achieving SSSI status. Castle Bottom is now one of only nine National Nature Reserves (NNR) in Hampshire, and a significant site in the Thames Basin Heaths SPA.
The Society has played a major role in local planning, suggesting the extension of the Yateley Green Conservation Area to include all of Yateley Green.
The Society’s evidence was pivotal in saving Yateley Lodge from being converted into a public house, and in persuading the Inspector to refuse major commercial development at Clarks Farm though development pressure on this site still continues.
The Society played its part in the very long running saga of the new Hart Local Plan (1996-2006). The Society appeared at the Inquiry which opened in September 1997. No further housing development was proposed in the Plan for Yateley by Hart District Council. However developers objecting to the plan cumulatively had proposed up to 800 houses in Yateley, thereby increasing its population by up to a further 10%, and building on practically every field left which is not registered common land. The housing sites proposed by developers objecting to Hart’s Local Plan included Cobbetts Lane, Fox Farm, the Urnfield Site to the north of Vicarage Road, and Love Lane Fields, thus seeking to extend Yateley into Eversley. All of these objection sites were excluded from the final plan.
The report of the panel who presided over the Examination in Public into the Hampshire Structure Plan was reviewed in 1998. For the first time the Society was given the unusual distinction of being represented at the EIP, and generally supported the County Council.
The recent introduction of more formal systems for involving voluntary organisations such as the Yateley Society in developing policy has increased the workload substantially. For example the “Yateley Village Design Framework”, a scheme for deciding what improvements might be made to the Reading Road through Yateley involved a number of ordinary Society members in a walk-about to discover the facts on the ground, and how we as members of the local community think the issues raised should be addressed.