Seeking a green light

All areas: Firm needs permission

In the public notices this week, a waste management company is hoping for permission to continue using land in Colnbrook for vehicle storage.

The Lanz Group (LG) uses the land adjacent to its head office to store HGVs at Poyle New Cottages in Bath Road.

The site operation requires land to store vehicles. This is for security purposes and for maintenance.

The Lanz Group ‘through no fault of its own’ has had ‘no choice’ but to evolve its business over the past several years to survive in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the pressures from Heathrow expansion plans, its representatives said.

Two major infrastructure projects – Heathrow’s third runway and the Western Rail link to Heathrow – were put on hold, but the process resulted in the existing parking areas previously used by the LG being compulsory purchased by the regulating authority.

As such the LG found itself in a position of needing to find space for its vehicles. There is ‘no other land in the vicinity of the site’ which can be used.

It is now looking for retrospective permission to change the use of the land from agricultural to open storage in association with its recycling facility.

This application ‘represents part of trying to keep 38 employees employed,’ they said.

Technically this is ‘inappropriate development of the greenbelt’ so it must be determined if the good outweighs the harm.

“The use of land for open storage cannot itself be considered to harm the openness of the greenbelt in any kind of permanence. This is due to the transient nature of the use,” representatives argued.

See plans with reference P/10697/016 in Slough council’s planning portal.

Traffic

Slough council is looking to close the road at Furnival Avenue between its junction with Farnham Road and number 3 Furnival Avenue.

This would be from 12.01am on March 19 and expected to end by 11.59pm on March 22.

It is also seeking to close Fairlie Road between its junction with Edinburgh Avenue and its junction with Buckingham Avenue.

That would be from 12.01am on April 14 and work is expected to be done and dusted by 11.59pm of the same day.

SBC also wishes to stop traffic passing through Holmedale, outside numbers 1 to 3, 2 and 8 of that road.

Another closure is listed for Salisbury Avenue between its junction with Cumberland Avenue and its junction with Surrey Avenue.

That would be from 12.01am on April 15, likely until 11.59pm on April 26.