The image above illustrates the developer’s redesigned Cheap Street frontage showing ex-Save-the-Children shop and Catherine Wheel pub, with flats behind.

Developers continue to push for a high-rise redevelopment of the Kennet Centre with 367 flats in blocks up to ten storeys high, and no affordable housing.

The plans were put forward by Lochailort in 2021, and after various changes, they were turned down by West Berkshire Council last year.  Now the developers have appealed, and the appeal will be heard by a national planning inspector who has the power to approve the scheme.

Details and images of the plans (21/00379/FULMAJ and 21/00380/FULMAJ) can be found on The Newbury Society’s website (newbury-society.org.uk ), as well as the West Berkshire Council planning website.  The Newbury Society is not opposed to redeveloping the Kennet Centre, but believe this scheme, with its sheer scale and mass, would be damaging to Newbury.

It includes six-storey blocks of flats on the town-centre street-frontages of Bartholomew Street and Market Street; an over-sized office block, as well as two tower blocks in the centre of the site.  It is a long way short of the parking and open space needed to meet the usual planning standards, and the developers have consistently refused to include any affordable housing at all. 

If given the go-ahead, this development would change the character of Newbury town centre, with its two- and three-storey buildings, and it would have a major impact on the setting of listed buildings such as the Catherine Wheel and The Newbury.

The Newbury Society and many Newbury residents have sent in objections to this scheme.  Now we want people to sign this e-petition.

If you care about Newbury, please add your name to the petition opposing this development, and please forward this link to friends, family, and anyone else you think might be interested.

Please continue to sign this petition which will now stay open until the date of the appeal in October.

 Full details of the Newbury Society’s objections can be found on the website, www.newbury-society.org.uk and in the Bulletins of October 2022 and June 2023.

Eleanor Mullens on behalf of the Newbury Society