The following letter has been submitted to the Wycombe District Council.
The
Marlow
Society
Phillip Taylor, PO Box No. 3078,
Stadium Planning Project Officer, Marlow,
Planning and Sustainability, SL7 2WQ.
Wycombe District Council,
Queen Victoria Road ,
High Wycombe, Bucks., 23 October 2010.
HP11 1BB.
Your ref, CSA/B2
Dear Mr. Taylor,
Wycombe Community Stadium and Sports Project – Issues and Options Consultation.
Thank you for your letter of 17th September concerning the public consultation on the above project. The copies of the consultation brochure enclosed have been distributed among our members to enable them to make individual, personal comments if they so wish. The Society’s Executive Committee has considered the Stadium and Sports Project and as its views do not follow many of the underlying assumptions contained within this brochure, its comments are set out as follows
1. Core Strategy Alteration.
It is noted that the Council is to start work on an alteration to the Core Strategy of the Development Framework to provide for the identification of a site for a new stadium and sports complex. It is the Society’s view that the selection of such a site should follow and not precede the proper establishment of the need for these proposed facilities. It does not seem reasonable to the Society that a suitable site should be identified until the need for the facilities it would provide has been established. It is the Society’s view that this need has not been properly identified. The Council appears to rely on The Wycombe District Sports Facility Strategy 2009-2014 to evidence the community demand for a stadium and sports complex. This document we consider to be an enabling strategy, not an adopted policy, which sets out the level of sporting and leisure provision which is desirable within the District. Indeed, in page 32 of the Sports Facility Strategy, the facilities said to be required are described as the particular aspirations of sports clubs and their associates and organisations which clearly have a vested interest in the extension of sporting and leisure provision. Whilst it is clear that a high level of sporting facility will benefit the community, in the Society’s view, it has not been adequately demonstrated that the existing facilities in the District are insufficient or that these facilities are fully utilised, many of which are not made available by schools and sports clubs to community use.
Additionally, it is considered that the Sports Facility Strategy has not been exposed to the wider community, concentrating mainly as it does on schools and sports clubs and their associates, whose extensively underused facilities have not been taken into account. To enable any of the recommendations of this Strategy to be included in the Core Strategy, it should be subjected to all the consultative disciplines of the Wycombe Development Framework before it can have any legitimate claim to have community consent or approval. We believe that the Sports Strategy was not included in the ‘Imagine the Future’ consultation process and, without this legitimisation, the Society submits that the Core Strategy should not be altered to include any of its provisions.
2. Future Usage and Sustainability.
The WDC has stated that the requirement for a new stadium is to accommodate jointly the Wycombe Wanderers Football Club and the London Wasps Rugby Club. These clubs now share the Adams Park site in High Wycombe which, they claim, is inadequate for their joint requirements. It seems, therefore, that these organisations would be the main beneficiaries of a new stadium .It is their responsibility to provide a forward business plan to show, inter alia, the current gate attendance and the resultant income from this and other usage together with a future estimate of gate attendance the resultant income and the suitability and level of availability of the proposed stadium for community use. In this context the Council will have noted the gate attendance of 6759 at the London Wasps match at Adams Park on 17th October. We suspect that this poor attendance was the result of the match timing, dictated more by the requirements of television coverage than the convenience of their supporters. We are forced to question whether a new stadium is the incentive that would entice increased gate attendance rather than being subservient to commercial and media demands and other influences. Information on the usage of the new stadium at Oxford and its community benefits might well be apposite here.
3. Funding by Enabling Development.
Your Consultation Document indicates that, of the sites originally examined, Adams Park, the Abbey Barn South and the Booker Air Park are suggested as being able to provide four varying levels of sporting and leisure facilities ranging from the improvement of the existing stadium at Adams Park to the provision of a new stadium with multiple leisure and sports facilities, a sports village incorporating a new stadium and extensive indoor and outdoor facilities all offered at one venue at Booker.
It is clear that the preferred option is the development of Booker Air Park which has the largest area of some 97 hectares. It appears that funding for this development would require a huge residential enabling development to provide the millions required for its provision. Commercial development to produce funding does not seem feasible when the district is currently overburdened with vacant retail and other commercial premises, a situation which is not likely to change in the short term. Indeed, the Council’s consultants Grant Thornton makes it absolutely clear that no funding would be possible from commercial sources. In this respect the Society would resist a massive increase in the District Housing Allocation for the direct purpose of building sports and leisure facilities to the exclusion of other services where the money might well be better spent. The Society would also resist the setting aside of long established and valued Green Belt, AONB and landscape protective policies, to facilitate what is essentially a commercial development.
It has been suggested to us at various consultation meetings that enabling residential development could be sited at Abbey Barn South to fund the suggested development at Booker. This would seem to be very difficult in the light of the decision by the Secretary of State’s Inspector in dismissing the appeal to build housing at 23-28, Marlow Bottom Road (planning application 09/06671/FUL), (appeal reference APP/KO425/ A/10/2122168). In dismissing this appeal the Inspector stressed, in his Decision Notice dated 10th August 2010, the importance and the necessity to show an
‘audit trail’ of direct connection between the Section 106 funding and the service improvements which the new development would require and from which the new residents would benefit. This direct connection, we suggest, would be difficult to establish between an Abbey Barn development and the proposals for Booker to provide a stadium and sports facilities to the exclusion or diminution of funding for other essential services.
4. Evaluation of the District Community’s Need for Leisure and Sporting Facilities.
It is this Society’s view that, as set out above, proper community consultation has not been done to ascertain the community’s requirement for the extent and location of leisure and sporting facilities. All sections of the community have not had the opportunity to give their views on the type and location of those amenities which they require.
No information has been available as to the density or the expected increase in traffic, the necessary vehicle parking provision or the provision of new roads and other hard and soft infrastructure that will be required and the environmental impact. Without this information the community does not have the minimum of information needed to choose between the Council’s suggested sites or more localised facilities, more easily accessible to their particular community group. The present proposals seem to focus on and therefore benefit High Wycombe and its immediate surrounding area with dubious benefits and distinct disbenefits for the rest of the District, notably in the increase in traffic congestion and the inappropriate intrusion into AONB and Green Belt areas.
It is not sufficient that the sporting and leisure facilities needed are specified by the Council’s Leisure Department. These facilities should not be a ‘wish list’ of sporting and leisure provision for the District which is made by Council officers and members, but the expressed needs of all sections of the community.
5 Conclusion.
1. The identification of a site for the location of a sports stadium to accommodate the Wycombe Wanderers and the London Wasps should follow, not precede, proper consultation with all sections of the community,
rather than just sports clubs, to determine the true need for sporting and leisure facilities.
2. It is the view of the Marlow Society that identifying a site for a new stadium to accommodate jointly both the Wycombe Wanders Football Club and the London Wasps Rugby Club is primarily the business of these
organisations and their consultants and developers.
3. The extent, location and type of present and future provision of sport and leisure facilities should be prescribed by the properly established requirement of the community in the Wycombe District.
4. The location of these facilities should be, as far as is possible, within reasonable travelling distance of the residents of the District, especially children and young people.
5. The ownership and the responsibility for the future management, usage and financial sustainability of the stadium and other facilities have not been made clear. There is absolutely no evidence that the stadium project would be financially viable and the Council’s strategy to provide these facilities cannot have credibility without proven viability.
6. All anticipated and resultant hard and soft infrastructure improvements should be precisely researched together with the amount of Section 106 funding that would be required and its allocation and the community informed.
7. No alteration of the Core Strategy should be made to include provisions that have not been the subject of the Development Framework disciplines.
8. No long established Green Belt or other protective policies should be easily set aside to facilitate these proposals.
Yours sincerely,
Ron Waters
Chairman.
