This is the first development site put forward by Countryside - the Joint Venture partner of RBWM for the Maidenhead Town Centre sites. It is very disappointing from two major aspects:-

• There is no provision for parking for the proposed number of apartments.
• The height of the building is far too high at 18 eighteen floors - eight floors should be the limit in Maidenhead.

Given the number of floors shown in the illustration, there appear to be six apartments on each floor amounting to a total of ninety apartments over fifteen floors. This total would require parking for all the owners.

There appears to be a total of three floors of office accommodation within the same building – and, of course, parking would be required to be used by office workers.

The Maidenhead townscape has a natural limit for the height of buildings. The town sits in the Thames Valley and as such, does not dominate the surrounding countryside, viewed from higher-up (e.g. Cliveden) where the existing high buildings are lower than the skyline.

The new developments should be sympathetic to this, preserving these aspects from the surrounding countryside - not by having a collection of tall buildings which violate the existing landscape.

In the case of parking, the failure to include it for the number of units as part of the development proposal, can only mean that cars will require provision elsewhere in the town at a cost to either the Developer or the Council.

At current prices, providing 200 surface car parking spaces will cost the Council tax payers £2,000,000 (£10.000 per space). To provide the same number of multi-storey spaces will cost the Council tax payers £4,000,000 (£20,000 per space).