14 March 2007 - Green Euro-MP Caroline Lucas has warned that the regional assembly’s plans to build 89,000 homes in the so-called Western Corridor could damage the area’s premier wildlife sites.

The sections of the South-East Plan that deal with the Western Corridor – a zone that includes parts of Bucks, Berks, Hampshire and Surrey straddling the M3 and M4 - will undergo four days of public scrutiny by a panel of inspectors, beginning next Thursday (Mar 22) in Reading.

Dr Caroline Lucas, MEP for the area, said the inspectors must pay heed to the Appropriate Assessment – a statutory document - that judges the potential impact of the plan on sites designated by the EU as Special Protection Areas (S PA s) for their importance for birds or Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) for their importance for other wildlife.

She said: “The independent consultants who carried out the report concluded that five wildlife sites in the area under consideration would be at risk from factors such as increased water ab straction and traffic and the encroachment of urban life on the countryside - unless a great many steps are taken. I am concerned about some of the measures and have doubts whether others will in fact be carried out.”

Among the measures are reducing the need to travel by greater use of IT, congestion charging, restricting more polluting vehicles from the vicinity of the sites, controlling the number of site visitors coming by car, and creating buffer zones where no development is permitted and alternative green spaces for recreation.

The sites are:

Kennet and Lambourn Floodplain SAC, West Berks/Wiltshire

At risk from increased water abstraction and effluent discharge

River Lambourn SAC, West Berks

At risk from increased water abstraction

Kennet Valley Alderwoods SAC, West Berks

At risk from increased water abstraction

Thames Basin Heaths SPA , Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey borders area

At risk from increased air pollution, water abstraction, recreational activities, aggregate extraction, and the encroachment of urban life eg arson, vandalism, fly-tipping, light pollution, predation by cats, crows, magpies and foxes, noise.

The sites are protected by the ‘precautionary principle’ so that development can only be permitted where it can be shown that it won’t damage the important wildlife features of the site, although there are get-out clauses.

Dr Lucas said: “Much of the planned housing is a result of the Government’s hothouse economic strategy – which focuses on the South-East, East of England and London at the expense of other areas of the country and at the expense of quality of life in these regions.”

The regional assembly has designated the area from the border with London west to the border with Wiltshire as the Western Corridor. It has been earmarked for 89,520 homes in the years to 2026. These have been allocated to the following local authorities: Slough 4,700, Windsor and Maidenhead 5,620, Bracknell Forest 10,780, Wokingham 10,460, Reading 10,420, West Berks (only part of the local authority area in the Western Corridor) 9,500, South Bucks 1,800, Wycombe (only part of the local authority area in the Western Corridor), Basingstoke (only part of the local authority area in the Western Corridor) 15,900, Hart (only part of the local authority area in the Western Corridor) 3,900, Rushmoor 6,200, Surrey Heaths 3,740, Guildford (only part of the local authority area in the Western Corridor) 500.

ENDS