Redrow Development Update

The proposed residential development at the former RAE factory site by Redrow Home(Southern) Ltd & Farnborough Business Park Ltd is still going through the planning application process.

Redrow submitted amended plans, which included reducing the height of the terrace housing adjacent to Pinehurst Cottages to 2-storey, meaning the closest 3-storey property is now 21 metres from the boundary.

The Public consultation period ended on 12th February 2007 with another 13 letters of objection being received by the Council and it is now expected that the application will be presented to the Planning Committee on 28th March.

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Always and forever

Here, there and everywhere.
I must get organised - I need a part time bookeeper and full time manager.

MP's have assistants and researchers.
Us poor councillors .... nothing.
Quite right too.

Council Meeting

The Council Meeting of the 22nd February was the worst Council Meeting I have ever attended in my 16 years as a councillor.

I do however want to re-assure residents that much good work is done by many councillors in small working groups where they do not "play to the gallery" or press. I find the full council meetings sometimes brings out the worse side of members. Having said that it is usually good humoured and harmless.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the most effective meetings at Rushmoor are the panels where councillors work together to find solutions to local problems. You will be pleased to learn this happens all the time in Rushmoor.

Remembering the Aldershot Bombing

This last weekend, we had Thames Valley TV come and do a piece on the Aldershot Officers Mess Bombing by the IRA (in revenge for bloody Sunday) on 23rd Feb 1972 which killed 5 young women, an elderly gardener and a Catholic Priest (Padre). It was a turning point for the Official IRA, their first bombing on the mainland, and was such an outrageous slaughter of innocents that the Official IRA gave up the armed struggle later that year, only to be replaced by the Provisional IRA (Provos).

The bombing took place just a few 100 yards from where I lived. And it was poignant remembering the event and the effect it had on the town and the devastation it caused to the victims families and friends.

I want to see the site preserved as a garden of remembrance. And a little more money spent to make it worthy of the innocent souls who were murdered here, and a more pleasant place for friends and families to visit.