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Response below
received via email.
Great Haseley Parish Council wholeheartedly supports the revised
draft proposals, agreed by the Community Governance and Electoral
Issues Committee at its meeting held on 25 May 2022 to make no
change to the requested boundary change between Great Haseley and
Thame parishes.
For completeness, please find below Great Haseley Parish
Council’s (GHPC) response submitted previously. In Thame Town
Council’s justification for the proposed boundary changes it
states:
• Thame’s Cattle Market, once relocated, would be
within the Thame parish, rather than Great Haseley which would be
the case with the current parish boundary.
• GHPC counter that despite planning permission being granted
no movement has been made to develop the site. Development may not
take place at all thus there is no justification to move the
boundary at the present time. Successful companies and
organisations often outgrow their place of origin and move sites,
keeping their corporate identity operating within different
parishes, counties or countries without detrimental effect to their
business or the local area.
• Potential for Thame to have more influence over future
development in this area if its Neighbourhood Plan area was also
extended to include it.
• GPHC counter that a draft agreement is in place (see second
set of bullet points, page 2).
• Within the proposed new parish boundary is a live Reserved
Matters planning application for employment land that currently
falls under the parish of Great Haseley. This would be dependent on
/ serve predominantly Thame’s facilities and people but Thame
currently would not receive any support to manage the impact on its
infrastructure. By moving the parish boundary, Thame would be
eligible to receive developer contributions to offset the impact of
the development on Thame’s infrastructure.
• GHPC counter that the Reserved Matters application has now
been approved and that the eligibility to receive developer
contributions will be considered and shared to offset the impact
the development will have on both parishes.
The Parish Council reiterates that despite its largely rural
character, Great Haseley Parish is in fact an interestingly varied
area:
• 252 houses in 4 village “centres” (Great
Haseley, Little Haseley, Milton Common, North Weston)
• 3 significant light industrial estates (Thame Road, Farol,
Ariens) with other developments, principally changes of use from
agricultural to light industrial or services
• Development of planned and completed renewable energy
farms
• Predominantly agricultural land.
This balance gives GHPC a range of different perspectives, and the
need to respect the interests of a wide range of citizens,
residents and commercial interests.
We note that Thame Town Council proposes a change to its southern /
our northern border to incorporate the new industrial estate north
of Thame Road, and including the settlement of North Weston. We
understand that the principal benefit to Thame Town Council would
be to secure provision of ‘employment land’ in their
neighbourhood plan above and beyond that allocated in the District
Local Plan on the basis of evidence of need. This can be done
through negotiation of Neighbourhood Plan boundaries as has already
been agreed rather than hard parish boundary change, and this is
indeed the position that GHPC agreed in principle to approve:
• Negotiations were concluded between the two parties to
agree that Thame should include the whole of the industrial estate
for the purposes of its Neighbourhood Plan
• And that in return, GHPC would agree a split of any s.106
and CIL money that might accrue.
The reason that this was not finalised is that Thame Town Council
informed GHPC that they needed to push on with their Neighbourhood
Plan process and could not wait for GHPC to secure its own legal
advice.
Nevertheless, GHPC remains open to conclude the deal with regard to
the Neighbourhood Plan boundaries should Thame Town Council wish to
re-engage.
However, the GHPC position in the consultation response from Thame
is misrepresented and overstated. GHPC did not agree to a change in
the Parish boundary, as the Thame response suggests – and we
are happy to share the relevant paperwork relating to the draft
agreement set out to above.
Furthermore, GHPC would not, and does not, agree to redrawing the
parish boundary for the following reasons:
Planning
• Retaining a strong influence and planning responsibility
for the industrial estates that form the boundary of the parish is,
and remains, an important safeguard against over-development: our
ability to protect and preserve that boundary if we lose that part
of the parish is significantly weakened: we become simply a party
to be consulted by Thame rather than a statutory consultee
ourselves.
• In particular, if Thame secure a change of boundary it
could weaken our ability to resist ribbon development along the
A418 and A329 within the area Thame wish to secure into their
parish to increase their evidenced employment need. Great Haseley
would argue that there are other development areas within the
existing Thame parish that can be identified for commercial
development but GHCP would not be a statutory consultee.
• We have a very direct interest in such development, not
least because of the significant increase in HGV traffic to service
these estates – which, coming direct from the M40 to the
industrial estates outside Thame has no impact on the centre of
Thame itself, but will have a real impact on the A329, which is the
only viable route into and out of the village, and is already being
used as a “rat run” by heavy traffic to avoid
Oxford.
• SODC will already be aware of the problems of heavy traffic
on this road: we share with our neighbours in Little Milton the
desire for Oxfordshire County Council to act to reduce HGV traffic
on this road, by imposing weight restrictions and enforcing 20mph
speed limits: further industrial strip development will only
increase it, but a change in parish boundaries will reduce
GHPC’s role in commenting on any such proposals.
Resources
• The dwellings and residents of North Weston represent
roughly 10% of our funding base. The loss of these properties, as
well as the commercial development that is already underway, as
agricultural building are converted to business use, significantly
impacts on GHPC revenues and represents at least a 10% reduction in
our direct funding.
For these reasons, GHPC strongly argues that the redrawing of this
boundary is unnecessary and inappropriate and should be
resisted.
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