Statement in Relation to Holyport Studios Planning Application

Statement in Relation to Holyport Studios Planning Application

23rd January 2023

No representative of the College was in attendance at the Extraordinary General Meeting of Bray Parish Council on Friday 20th January in relation to the outline planning application for Holyport Studios. It has come to our attention that, at this meeting it was implied both within the application itself and also by a representative of Greystoke Land, that Holyport College was supportive of the application and would materially benefit from this application as the developers have included a provision of £1.25 million towards a safe walking route between the College and the village on the East side of the Ascot Road, as well as access to a cricket pitch on the site of the proposed development.

The College would like to clarify a number of facts in relation to this matter:

• The College does not support this application, has no agreement with Greystoke Land in relation to a safe walking route (or any other element of the planning application) and is surprised that Greystoke could be misleading Bray Parish residents by implying that such an agreement or support is in place. We will be writing to Greystoke to clarify this position and to ask them to refrain from making further such implications in future
• In his presentation on Friday evening, the representative of Greystoke claimed that two Holyport College students had been hit by cars in recent years as a result of the absence of a safe walking route. We are only aware of one such incident (primarily because very few of our students currently walk or cycle to the College as it is not safe for them to do so)
• The College enjoys a long standing relationship with Holyport Cricket Club and has always been grateful for the use of their facilities in the Summer months. There would be no material benefit to the College in relation to the use of proposed cricket facilities as part of this new development as these would be significantly further away from the College than Holyport Cricket Club. We therefore do not see any community benefit from this proposal. The use of our name in relation to this provision is misleading
• The College will be filing an objection to the planning application on several grounds, not least: the level of disruption the increase in traffic will cause to our boarders given the proximity of our boarding houses to Forest Green Road and the level of risk posed by the increase in traffic to pedestrians and cyclists accessing the College
• The College has had recent (within the last two weeks), productive conversations with officers from RBWM in relation to the provision of a safe walking route between the College and the village. We will shortly be launching an informal consultation with local residents into two possible options for this walking route. Neither option involves a footpath on the East side of Ascot Road as we do not believe this to be a safe or cost effective solution

Download our Statement Here