• HGV movements
depend...
Pru’s
spokesman said “SPLAT has put forward some fairly
scary numbers but the scale of [HGV] movements it
has suggested certainly isn’t proposed. That would
depend on the end occupier and their requirements.”
The Pru has previously and continually
referred to 600 HGV movements per day, now they are
positioning themselves to increase the amount of HGV
movements as their many customers require! This
positioning means they are not planning to confirm
the amount until after Outline Planning approval,
when it would be too late for us to raise
objections!
We have considerable substantiated information on
HGV movements from comparable sized mega depots,
which indicate the amount of movements could be far
higher than one HGV per minute every hour of every
day of every week (over 1,500 HGV movements every
single day)!
Let us assume Tesco (as reported in the Trade Press
since 2004) or another major retailer could occupy
the largest of the many mega sheds. This one mega
shed could receive up to 250 HGV inbound movements
during evening peak hour, which equates to over 4
HGV movements every minute.
There
would also be additional HGV movements, including
outbound movements and traffic from the many other
proposed mega sheds!
One of the many
mega sheds could generate over 40% of the Pru’s
previously stated daily HGV movements in just one
hour (during evening peak congestion)!
So how many HGV movements would there really be?
• Air Quality impact to be re-assessed
The Pru has
recently been forced to undertake another air
quality assessment, this time including the
potential impact on the concerning air quality issue
(AQMA) at the M3 Junction 4A, as a result of Highway
Agency concerns. A different situation to the
Pru’s quoted “no clear reason for objecting”.
The assessment needs to include the worst case
traffic impact and not just the Pru’s
understated position.
• Limiting height...
The Pru
regularly refer to the tallest building on site
being 22 metre high. What is their point, as they
also say the site is “well hidden”, so who actually
sees the building? However, just one of the Pru’s
proposed 19 metre high sheds would be 2,500%+ larger
than the tallest building. The Pru also need
to remove a massive amount of mature woodland
(previously over 1,000,000 sq ft). The resulting
impact of their huge constantly floodlight buildings
would be visually intrusive and conflict with local
policies, including the destruction of the protected
Strategic Gap between Farnborough and Fleet.
• In summary, there have been many occasions where
the Pru has tried to mislead us
In case you were
not aware, here is the start of their misleading ‘Pru
speak’:
In early 2006, our concerned resident’s group
uncovered the Pru’s real intentions for our
area, a 1,250,000 sq ft mega shed, which was approx.
200% larger than their submitted plans to Hart
Council.
Yet a Pru spokesman said: “We have never
considered a single building of that size on that
site”.
Here is the truth, an extract from the previous
Pru’s brochure and website, which were rapidly
removed the day before the first BBC News coverage
of our campaign!
Even now their
current plan includes the potential of a single mega
shed in excess of 1,000,000 sq ft (click
here) yet, their recent press article states
they have limited the largest shed to 860,000 sq ft!
You decide whether you trust the Pru and
whether they are understating the impact on our area
to avoid paying the significant costs of undertaking
appropriate road improvements?
They continually refer to £3.5M of road
improvements, which mainly relate to replacing the
busy Summit Avenue/Minley Link roundabout with 24 x
7 traffic signals (the Pru confirm the
reasoning is to make HGVs manoeuvre the junction
easily). Also, they would add a major roundabout to
the Ively Road purely for access to their site, are
they road improvements? We do not think so!
