Merry Christmas everyone!
Although Big Tree Night was cancelled this year, a small group of volunteers have been hard at work over the last few months – taking orders for Christmas Trees from our High Street traders – so that the street can light up at the beginning of December.
CHRISTMAS in Shepperton has not been cancelled!
The High Street has been standing up pretty well recently, certainly better than many oth-ers in the area. We have some new businesses beginning to set up; an Italian café/bistro is in development, possibly a burger bar too. Also, Trade City, as you will have noticed, has just opened, run by Juj and Ram. The council have even had some electric car charging points erected not far from their shop. How modern is that!
Planning
On Planning issues, our committee member, Ken Snaith writes below:
Most residents will have seen the commence-ment of extensive groundworks associated with the large extension to Shepperton Studi-os; outline planning for it having been ap-proved in 2019 (Ref 18/01212/OUT). As part of the approval ‘conditions’ Shepperton Studi-os Ltd (SSL) have to submit detailed plans for buildings, car-parks, landscaping etc.
The two most recent of these are, firstly, for a 6-acre area on the northern part of the site, adjacent to the res-ervoir, to become a backlot area for filming
(Ref 21/01547/FUL). This area was initially intended to be additional ground level car-parking. Secondly a 6- level multistorey car-park near the proposed new entrance off Shep-perton Road (Ref 21/01548/FUL) to miti-gate the loss of the carparking above.
The Residents’ Association consider these as major changes from the original proposals and have lodged con-cerns at a recent liaison meeting.
The main effect of these changes will be to move the majority of the carparking into the southern part of the site and hence our view that most traffic will now enter and exit from Shepperton Road, compared to that which would have routed via Studios Road; not agreed by SSL.
Residents can still make their own comments on these proposals via the Council’s on-line planning portal.
So, as always, there will be these and similar issues that your Residents’ Association are monitoring and ex-pressing views on behalf of Shepperton’s residents.
For now, Christmas has arrived (nearly) and, through all the trials and tribulations of these unprecedented couple of years, we all want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, per-haps with family and friends. But whatever your Christmas means to you, just feel the peace and/or enjoy yourselves.
Either way, I trust you will have a good time!
Carl Phillips, Vice-Chair Shepperton Residents’ Association