What sort of community do you envisage being created at Pincents Hill?

Blue Living firmly believes in the importance of strong, engaged and active communities and providing opportunities for people to integrate well into the local community, its processes and organisations . It is envisaged that Pincents Hill would become part of an enlarged Tilehurst Parish. Ideally it would be a family-focussed community bringing together people of different backgrounds, ages and economic situations. This helps to avoid the creation of enclaves of privilege and areas of social exclusion. In order to achieve this we aim to provide a wide mix of housing types, sizes and tenures evenly distributed across the place. We are of the view that a neighbourhood there should offer homes of a size and price to enable people to get a start in life, but also a place to stay as their circumstances change.

The focus of the new community will be on medium-size family homes, although there will be some smaller flats for younger people who are starting out and for older people (perhaps with integrated care services) and a few much larger houses.

It is our intention to provide opportunities for people to live at Pincents Hill in a more environmentally friendly way and galvanise the community to take collective action with this in mind. We believe this will be one of the unique selling points of the project, of the place and of its community.

For further details, see the Pincents Hill outline planning application (Design and Access Statement: Building a Community), available on the planning section of West Berkshire Counci's website.