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Conservation Area Extension
In September last year the recommendation was made that the existing Taplow Conservation Areas should be extended. This decision was a direct result of local lobbying to bring forward the decision time for the Riverside Settlement to coincide with the Village Conservation Area review cycle. Under normal circumstances the Riverside Settlement would have had another few years to wait before we were due for a review. Those few years could have been crucial for the Riverside community, since a large slice of it was still designated as a GB3 area. The implication of such a designation was that limited infilling was still allowed in the existing Conservation Area - the only Conservation Area in the whole of South Bucks with such a loophole for developers to take advantage of. The latest review includes the recommendation that this designation be changed to GB1 to bring it into line with all the other Conservation Areas in the District, an anomaly long overdue for correction. There was also another threat ahead: the Local Development Framework, which replaces the old Local Plan, is still not set in stone and had the Riverside review timetable been left as it was, it could have resulted in further development of the area being approved as still being within the GB3 zone and approved under the old Local Plan conditions. The new areas bring about 2km of riverside under conservation control, which has to be a major contribution to the protection of this area of our Parish. In one sense it is strange that, despite all the messages we were getting from the Environment Agency regarding their concern for preserving the Parish environment, the Jubilee River was not considered worthy of protection - or was this a case of the District not talking to the Environment Agency? Perhaps this omission is another instance of the essentially urban orientation of our planners in that they regard the only things worth preserving to be buildings, rather than fields or riverside habitats. Nevertheless, this extension to the protected area is to be warmly welcomed and may give us some ammunition in the up-and-coming problems that are sure to emerge when the new owners of the area around Taplow Paper Mill and Skindles attempt to profit from their investment.