Almost 80 people packed Old Pixham School on Wednesday 11th March to see the Council’s roadshow, speak to Council officers and find out more at our formal meeting. Cllr Margaret Cooksey answered questions and encouraged all to write in with their thoughts. See below for contact details.
A major concern was the proposed creation of 4 traveller sites at The Depot. This is a secured site with access restrictions, leading down to the River Mole. Safety and security issues of allowing people to walk/ drive through The Depot at any hour of day or night were highlighted. Although part of the site is ‘brownfield’, most of it is not and is part of the Green Belt where planning restrictions are stringent to say the least. We have a section about this on our ‘Pixham Alert’ webpage.
High levels of concern were raised about the density of development at the 3 sites close to the present Aviva building. People asked questions about car parking allocations and raised concerns about the strong possibility of overflow parking in Pixham. Seriously increased traffic along Pixham Lane and the A24 was also mentioned. There is enough congestion at present. More info on the ‘Pixham Alert’ page of the PRA website.
Flooding was another important issue: major floods are predicted to occur with increasing regularity due to climate change and even now some residents face flooding each year. Any site development will incur water run-off and thus increase local flooding.
Thames Water is scheduled for re-development to enable them to cope with increased pressure on our sewage services but many other aspects of community infrastructure, such as overcrowded medical facilities, lack of sufficient places in local schools, etc, were mentioned.
We live in a beautiful area and want to protect the Green Belt.
A major point was the lack of any recognition of Pixham as a community. The meeting felt strongly that this must be addressed in the next version of the Draft Plan. Questions were also asked about the Community Infrastructure Levy where developers have to give a levy to local communities to enhance them. This would be at least 15% for Pixham, possibly on road improvement measures.
The meeting decided to form a Pixham Community Action Group. Please contact the PRA Chair, Pat Smith, if you’d like to be involved.