Review of Yateley Town Map 1981

1981 was the heyday of the Yateley Residents Association. The YRA held monthly meetings in the old Red Cross Hut, then on the Village Hall site. YRA Town Councillors attended these meetings to hear the views of ordinary residents, whether they were paid up members or not. The local reporter for the Yateley News was always in attendance, so local issues were given wide publicity.

1981 also saw the formation of The Yateley Society which was conceived as a registered charity to act as the amenity society for Yateley: to represent Yateley at the forthcoming huge planning inquiries; to undertake local history and ecological research, and to run a programme of monthly lectures on a wide variety of subjects, but always to have some Yateley content. The objective was to promote a 'pride of place'.

Public Participation

The 1981 Review of the Town Map of 1966 was based on a broadly based public consultation process. "In excess of 7,000 questionnaires were delivered to households and 250 questionnaires were left with businesses. In the event 847 replies were received from households and 37 from businesses." The replies to the questionnaire were analysed and form appendices A & B

Previous Unplanned Development

The population of Yateley in 1981 was already greater than planned in 1966. The 1981 Review stated that "the Working Party were mindful of the criticisms made in the past that Yateley had been permitted to develop in what appeared to be an unplanned and unco-ordinated manner, where services and facilities had lagged far behind the building of houses. This had not only hampered the development of a sense of people 'belonging' to an identifiable community, but it had also given rise to a number of serious social and environmental issues."

The objective of the 1981 Review was to try to ensure that future development took place "in a logical and comprehensive manner, with appropriate phasing" with a "moratorium on major residential development" until essential services, social and community facilities caught up "with the size and nature of the town's population." The proposals tried to stave off (unsucessfully as it turned out) the development of the 75 acre Monteagle Farm site until after 1988.

Transportation Proposals

"The Town Map should seek to provide for an integrated system of roads, footpaths and public transport facilities." The Working Party also proposed that through traffic on the A327 through Yateley should be diverted by construction of the Blackwater Relief Road. (In effect this objective was later achieved by downgrading Reading Road to B-road status and running the A327 along the A30 across Blackbushe.) The Review stated that if a viable local bus service within Yateley could not be achieved by commercial services then a community bus service must be provided "linking the estates of Yateley with a central (rail) terminus."

Sport and Leisure

Appendix F contained a list of all sports facilities in Yateley plus a two page summary of the detailed analysis by the Yateley Sports Council of the present and future needs in Yateley.

There is a considerable amount of other very useful evidence in the 1981 Review which will act as a baseline for the current emerging Parish Plan.

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