Save Brayards Green Uodate

Last night I attended another meeting about the LibDem-Tory Council's plans to build on the Firbank Rd garages, the cage at the end of Stanbury Rd and a part of Brayards Green. There were around 20 local residents present from the Brayards Estate and also the surrounding streets (esp Stanbury Rd and Firbank Rd).

The Council's project manager and architects drawing up the plans came to feedback on how they had changed their plans following the open day last month. The changes include

- reducing the number of houses on the cage/green site by 1 (to 5) and dropping plans for a "community space" behind the houses. The result of this is that they've been able to half the area of the Green they want to build on

- increased the number of houses on the garage site by 1 (to 3) to compensate for this as they are determined to build 8 houses

- changed the design of roofs and colour of the brick to try to better reflect the character of the area (sadly I didn't get a chance to see the new drawings though)

I think these changes are broadly welcome, but they don't change the fact that every single resident at the meeting was against the plan to build on the site at all! Residents were outraged that the Council were acting as if local residents could only have a say on the design and not on the fundamental question of whether the development should happen at all.

It's clear to me that there is a general consensus amongst residents that there should be no building on the green space and that ideally we'd like to keep the cage too and see it improved - for instance by turning it back into play space or incorporating it into the Green, perhaps with a community growing space. Opinion is a bit more mixed on the garages.

We had a vote at the meeting and found that no-one was in favour of the development going ahead and decided to hold a campaign planning meeting as soon as possible.