With the closure last year of Taplow Paper Mill, there is now the best opportunity for many years to improve the Mill Lane area.
For a long time a large part of the area has been in a state of suspended animation. Skindles Hotel is long closed and becoming derelict, the gas board site on the Thames bank has been levelled and de-contaminated, but remains silent and unused, Dunloe Lodge is empty and falling into decay and the open field and old Skindles Hotel car park to the east of Mill Lane are little used and gradually reverting to nature.
Active areas include some housing and several businesses, including the Windrush car sales site, offices in the boatsheds, two boatyards and the gasometer site, though whether this last is still needed is not known. There is also a hangover from the closure of the Paper Mill operation - a storage and baling site for waste paper formerly used in conjunction with the Paper Mill, but which has recently made claim to a standalone existence as a waste transfer site. The planning application was refused, but the waste transfer activities continue and are likely to go on for some time yet.
The Paper Mill site and much of the land in the area has been sold to Towntalk, a property development company, who are in process of formulating a plan for the area. The company and its architects and planning advisers have met once with Taplow Parish Council and have been in discussion with South Bucks District Council, including attempts to reach an agreement on the footprints and floor areas of existing buildings as a basis for the scope of any future applications.
At the meeting with the Parish Council some very tentative ideas were presented by Towntalk's architect, which amounted to redeveloping Skindles for housing, putting housing on the old Paper Mill site and the storage and baling site and office accommodation closer to the A4. Possible public access to the north of the site was mentioned, as was possible public access to the hillside east of the Jubilee River. The intention would be to keep the centre of the site, including the existing public footpath, as an open area.
The Parish Council responded by reiterating the Parish Plan and Local Development Framework's core strategy aspirations for the area, pointing out that the public access should be to the River Thames, in case the developers might think that the hillside above the Jubilee River might substitute for that. They also said that the areas shown on the architects' plan for office development were rather large in relation to the existing extent of built development. However, the outcome of discussion with the District Council would no doubt determine the size limitations. The Parish Council also urged the developers to consult with the public and organisations such as ours as soon as possible.
The extent of the land now owned by Towntalk includes Skindles, the Volkswagon garage, the field at the centre of the site, the hillside on the east bank of the Jubilee River, the storage and baling site, Dunloe Lodge and all the mill site and land to the north and west of the Jubilee River, except the northernmost part of Glen Island, which is owned by Taplow Court. Towntalk have also been in contact with the owners of the gas board site with a view to purchasing it, as yet with no result.
The key local references are the Taplow Parish Plan and the existing South Bucks Local Plan, which is now shading towards the Local Development Framework (LDF) that will replace it, so that increasingly there will be an emphasis on the emerging LDF. Both the Parish Plan and the Core Strategy proposals of the emerging LDF have specific policies for the Mill Lane area. There are in addition government planning guidelines and policy statements relating to the Green Belt, housing and flooding, which are particularly relevant, whilst many others, including regional planning guidance and the Buckinghamshire Structure Plan also have a relevance to the potential development.
The main points of the local plans are as follows.
The Taplow Parish Plan has proposed some key pointers to the way in which local people would wish to see the area improved. These are, firstly, to see a comprehensive rather than a piecemeal plan; secondly, to provide more public access for recreation to the River Thames including a riverside path leading to the confluence of the Thames and Jubilee Rivers. In order to help to achieve these objectives the Parish Plan accepts that there may need to be an exchange of land uses between what is now Green Belt and what is now developed land.
In the process of producing the Local Development Framework, the South Bucks District Core Strategy proposals define the Mill Lane area as 'an area of potential change in order to bring about enhancements while still protecting its overall Green Belt function'. The Core Strategy acknowledges the Parish Plan, which pre-dated it, and supports a comprehensive and co-ordinated planning approach to the locality. It is also definite that the maximum amount of development that will be permitted must not increase the area of developed land above that which currently exists - although it might be in different places. In addition, the Strategy states that any development will need to have particular regard to policies relating to flooding, employment land, the River Thames setting and the Conservation Area status of some of the site.
It is hoped that the developers will soon consult local organisations and the public so that we can all engage in a development, which, it is hoped, will be a renewed gateway into Taplow and Buckinghamshire.
Euan Felton
