Slough housing should be built canal-side
Slough Borough Council is currently negotiating to buy the wrong bit of the former ICI/Akzo Nobel site east of Wexham Road from the developers Panattoni, who specialise in redeveloping and managing industrial estates. True, SBC is buying the housing land on the site, and Panattoni has gained planning permission for housing to the south, by the rail line, and industrial units to the north, by the canal.
However, SBC should be using its taxpayer cash to push for the housing on this site to be canal-side, and part of a more wholesale regeneration of the Slough Arm of the Grand Union Canal.
Panattoni have said that homes by the canal would have been a more expensive prospect because there was more land contamination on the northern part of the site – it’s all about how you value the land or can put value into the land.
The Inland Waterways Association (charity) has come forward with a proposal to dig out part of the land canal-side there to create a marina similar to the oversubscribed one at Yiewsley on the other end of the Slough Arm.
This would create a much-needed ‘destination’ for the canal in Slough, which the council’s modest Canal Basin Regeneration of the former brick yard off Stoke Road does not, with its under-sized hammer-head turning point, a few retail units, and a big bite out of the Bowyer Playing Fields to accommodate flats which should have been on the other side of the canal on land around Kendal Close owned by SBC but inexplicably dropped out of the Basin Regeneration.
There is now a once- in-a-life-time opportunity to create something of real value in Slough, and this Labour council shouldn’t be allowed to waste that by its obsession with social housing numbers, high-density developments and taking the easy path of least resistance.
A marina in Slough will provide housing on the water, as well as round it, and a destination on the canal side which will create value for surrounding housing – new and existing – plus a focus for leisure and pleasure and supporting businesses. It will pay for itself in so many ways.
SBC should buy the land to the north of the Panattoni site, not the south, and it should make this happen; un-built-out planning permissions can be superseded by other ones for housing and industry if better, so the people of Slough should lobby their Council to make this happen.
Do we need more flats by the railway or a real regeneration of the canal?
Cllr DEXTER SMITH Conservative councillor for the
Colnbrook with Poyle ward