On 16 September 2008 the developers held an exhibition at the mill.
They showed plans covering the area from the A4 at Skindles through to the northern end of the paper-mill site. It is still very early in the planning process so there was not much detail about exactly what the proposed buildings would look like, but the overall idea was fairly clear. The current plans are reproduced below; we are very grateful to Hunter Page Planning for providing electronic copies in time for this issue and for allowing us to publish them.
Starting from the southern end, the main points are:
- Replace Skindles with a new hotel on the same site
- Provide a new public footpath along the river side of the hotel, linking Mill Lane to the Thames Path
- Move the Mill Lane/A4 junction to the eastern side of the VW dealership
- Build a tennis club behind the VW dealership
- Keep the existing working boatyard but add some new buildings to the site
- Build a group of Live/Work units where the recycling yard now is, along with a central services building holding meeting rooms etc
- Enlarge the inlets from the Thames to form small marinas with housing around them
- Build a set of linked apartments along the Jubilee River above the intake weir
- Provide new public footpaths to the northern end of the site
- Although not shown on the plans, there is the possibility of a footbridge to Boulters Lock
The Live/Work units are an interesting idea: these would be houses where each has an attached office with its own entrance and facilities. There would be a legal structure requiring at least one occupant of the house to work in the attached office, and limiting the type of work to be done there. Apparently this is already working in a few new developments. This sort of thing should really help to promote working from home and zero-commute businesses.
The exhibition was well attended and there was ample opportunity to ask questions and express opinions. It is a a positive start, though we must remain vigilant and make sure that local opinions are taken into account as the plans evolve.
The Society will make formal responses to the plans as they progress through the system. Please help by
joining the discussion in the Forum section of our website
www.taplowsociety.org.uk - if we don't know what your views are we cannot put them forward!
Andrew Findlay
This is the master site plan that we saw at the exhibition. Click on the image for a larger version.
