Madam, May I be permitted to make a contribution to the recent comments regarding the caravan village at Coleraine Farm, Walford.
In the main, I think the coverage which your reporter gave was good, but it would have been much more balanced if, as well as reporting the contentious questions, you had reported the answers.
I must also correct the expression 'out of earshot'. (This was in the penultimate paragraph of the report which appeared on page 6 of the Ross Gazette of June 17th.) At the beginning and end of the public section I did explain to those people attending that we would be openly discussing our decision when all comments had been heard. The noise in the hall made it difficult to hear ourselves and we drew closer together. It is a pity that this has been misinterpreted.
On the question of the application for the caravans, one extremely important aspect has been omitted.
The Applicant Company has the right to place caravans, just as they are today, without planning permission, provided that they are removed at the end of every season. However, without planning permission, they must not engage in substantial landscaping of the surrounding area, in order to make the caravans much less conspicuous. Furthermore, the opportunity to impose conditions about the visual appearance, the noise, light pollution and, where possible, the conduct of the occupants would be lost unless included in a planning permission.
So the decision facing the Council becomes quite a straightforward one...is it better for the locality and the local people to have the caravans there, without the need for permission, for as much as forty weeks of the year and expect them all to be moved out and back every season; or is it better to permit the development and then impose conditions, in order to minimise the effect on the locality?
It was a very difficult decision. It is clear that the Applicant Company has made substantial investment, made impressive progress with market penetration and innovation and has created hundreds of jobs in our locality, with all that that means in terms of tax revenues. It is not our duty to seek to stop or reverse this process but to make sure it is appropriately regulated.
It is also clear that the changes have had substantial adverse impact upon the lives of some of our Parishioners, who understandably feel very strongly. There are those who also believe that it has had a substantial detrimental effect on Ross.
Having weighed all of these issues, we judged that planning permission would give the opportunity to impose important controls. However, we restricted our approval to the number of caravans required for the expansion only up to the end of 2010. We linked to this the recommendation that the strongest possible enforcement action must be taken, if all of the conditions have not been fully complied with by the end of 2010. As a Parish Council, we are asked only for our recommendation, we cannot give formal approval. The matter will now be considered by the Planning Committee at Herefordshire Council.
Frank Myers MBE, Chairman
Walford Parish Counci