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16/06/09 : "Now put Kennet Meadows into Trust" :
Reading Borough Council will be urged at its next meeting to start a move to get Kennet Meadows, the area between Reading and the M4 which has been the subject of a series of bids for gravel extraction and building over the years, put into a trust to be managed as 'an important area of open space, a community and ecological asset for a wide range of different users and stakeholders, for landscape, recreational, wildlife, and educational purposes' as proposed in a joint study commissioned by Reading and West Berkshire Councils in 2002, before PRUPIM started work on their proposals to build 7500 houses in the area.
The motion will be proposed by Southcote Councillor and long-term Kennet Meadows campaigner Pete Ruhemann, who says the Government's decision to reject the proposal that Kennet Meadows should be a "Special Development Area" in the South-East Plan because of the flood risk it would pose to the town.
"The Environment Agency is very clear," he says, "that building on Kennet Meadows would risk floods in central Reading, including the Oracle, and that isn't going to go away. If anything, climate change increases the risk. It is never going to be right for development and we now need to look to its future, a future that ought to be as an asset for the local community. I don't imagine this is going to be easy to achieve, but I think putting the area into a trust is a dream that could now become true."
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