Naz Sarkar, Labour candidate for Reading West, has welcomed the report from West Berkshire planners on the controversial Pincents Hill application which will go before a special Eastern Area Planning Committee on 24 February and recommends the scheme be rejected.
He says: "The recommendations are founded on two major issues which have been the focus of campaigns by Martin Salter MP and myself. Blue Living want to build outside the settlement boundary and destroy the gap between settlements. And, now that West Berkshire in its Core Strategy is proposing to disperse development - as Labour and most of the parish councils argued - that emerging Strategy would be undermined if the Pincents Hill application were to be approved.
"That is why it was so important to get West Berkshire to set their Core Strategy before this application was considered.
"The report also recommends refusal because of the landscape impact, the effect on trees and insufficient information about highway implications, but though these issues are important I think the issues round the settlement boundary and the Core Strategy will be key if the application if Blue Living go to appeal."
"I am sure the Planning Committee will consider this report carefully but it can but be good news for the 1415 local people who wrote in objecting to this application! This application should be thrown out and I hope we hear no more of it."
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