Campaign Group Hopes Withdrawn Post Office Field Plan Is "Very Last" Proposal For Site

0:00We're delighted with this development, not the development on the field, but the development that it's to be proposed that it be withdrawn. And we very much welcome that. We thought that it was a terrible idea, one of a series of terrible ideas that have been on over the years for people to develop a field or build on the field. And we very much hope that as of now that this be the very last proposal for a development on the field, the field is a floodplain, a wetland, an official nature reserve in the last place in the centre of the town that has been left in nature. And we think that's the way that things should be.

1:03Martin, why do you think the Clarecon to Council has arrived at this decision? Is it that they've realised how unpopular the proposals were and they've maybe acknowledged the importance of the field to the people of Venice? Yeah, there was a considerable number of people who contacted the Council about the, in the, in its local transport plan, it was included because there was a bridge across the field and a lot of people contacted to oppose their proposal, apart from the fact that it would wreck the field, it was also when we ran this waste of money, when there's all kinds of other things including housing that are much, much more important for the Council to be spending money

2:04on. They originally proposed spending five million on this project and that would have been terrible waste of money. If this proposed variation is adopted, the projects, including this one, the NS2040 projects, will be omitted from the County Development Plan, but of course, speaking to the Mayor of Clair Paul Murphy last week, we heard that this is necessarily the end of it and that there could be proposals put forward in the future. He wasn't ruling that out anywhere. Do you feel that this is the end of it when it comes to these projects or would you be fearful that there could be an alternative proposal in a little while when the dust settles? We very much hope not, who knows what anybody would come up with, but we very much hope not. What I would recommend and encourage people to do, I think there's a period

3:06of four weeks from last Friday for people to make comments about this variation and they can do that by going on to the Claire Coco website and making a comment and I really encourage as many people as possible, just go on there and say we're really welcome the fact that the proposal for the development of the on the post office field has been withdrawn and let's leave this for nature. We in the campaign would like to find a mechanism to make this the very last proposal to develop the field as a number of ways that that could be done. The river is protected. The river focus is protected by a special area of conservation and some of the areas around the field at various different points.

4:09What they call the riparian area, the fields on the river bank are protected and that will be one way we want to find a mechanism to fill it for the field to be permanently protected. We've also got a lot of very positive ideas about how to move forward from here. But the first thing is that we get to the end of this month and we see that as they've proposed that the plan is that the field is removed from the county development plan.