Page 1158 - Reading Mercury

Development Centre at Reading’s Battle Hospital every week local youngsters who
have difficulty seeing, hearing, communicating, moving or balancing, can now go to
the sessions at Wokingham Hospital.
Officially opened by the Mayor of Wokingham, Cllr. Tina Marinos, the sessions at
the Dingley Family and Play Therapy Group, will take place in the baby clinic every
Friday between 9.30 a.m. and 12.30 p.m.

th
Thur 11 July
COUNCIL ACTS TO PROTECT TOWN’S HISTORIC SITES
Wokingham’s historic past has been further protected by sweeping new
conservation boundaries. Planning chiefs at Wokingham District Council have agreed
to establish a new conservation area along part of the north and south sides of
Langborough Road to protect its Victorian character.
And they have also pushed out the boundaries of the existing Wokingham Town
Centre Conservation Area to include Howard Palmer Park as well as incorporating a
corner of All Saints’ Church graveyard that was previously unprotected.
Harold Saunders, the District’s conservation architect said that it means that some
works will need more detailed observation and these areas will now be considered
more visually sensitive. The Langborough Road Conservation Area is the Victorian
edge of the town. We are looking for as pure Victorian as you can get and sadly as
you go along Langborough Road it changes as alterations have been made.
We accept that they are still living area that will take change but it should be
appropriate to the character and details incorporated in those existing buildings. The
Langborough Road Conservation Area will run from numbers six to forty-six on the
north side and numbers five to forty- three on the south side.
Various controls are imposed on development within conservation areas such as the
need for special permission to be sought for any demolition and six weeks’ prior
notice for work on trees.

A DREAM COMES TRUE AS YOUNG PEOPLE’S HOSTEL IS OPENED
A charity that has spent five years raising funds for a young persons’ hostel in
Wokingham finally saw the fruits of its labours rewarded at the opening ceremony last
nd
Tuesday July 2 . The hostel, in Seaford Court, was officially opened by the Chairman
of the Wokingham District Council, Diana Carpenter, in a ceremony that thanked the
numerous organisations involved in its eventual success.
The hostel is to house ten homeless young people, aged between 18 and 25, with a
view to them finding a job and then their own accommodation. A number of councils
and organisations were involved in the building of the hostel but the brain child was
Chris Pape, of Finchampstead Road, who set up the Roman Catholic charity, Caritas,
to raise the necessary cash. She said, “there is very little rented accommodation in the
Wokingham area and it is too expensive to buy so young people cannot stay in the
area.” Mrs. Pape became involved after she saw some of her foster children slip
through the net after leaving her care.
Bob Wyatt, a district councillor and former Mayor of Wokingham has supported the
charity from its beginning and was extremely pleased that the hostel could now be put
to use.
The hostel has been a collaboration of many organisations including the district
council which donated the land, the Housing Association who submitted the plans,

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