West Berkshire Council has reapplied for a full-size 3G pitch at Faraday Road, five months after Natural England objections. Comments close 7 September.

West Berkshire Council has applied again for a full-size 3G pitch at Faraday Road in Newbury, five months after it pulled the same proposal over the risk of microplastics washing into the River Kennet.

The new application, 26/01699/REG3, was received on 5 August and validated on 12 August. It covers the “construction of a new full size synthetic pitch with spectator fencing system to replace the existing natural grass area”.

Comments close on Monday 7 September. The site notice went up on 18 August and runs to 9 September. The council has set itself a determination deadline of 7 October.

What is being proposed

The council is both applicant and planning authority here. The scheme was drawn up by Sports Labs Ltd of Livingston, which sets out the detail in its design and access statement:

  • a pitch footprint of 106 metres by 70 metres, laid as a 50mm 3G turf system to FIFA Quality standard
  • ball-stop fencing at 4.5 metres and 1.2 metres, in moss green, with neoprene washers on every fixing to cut the rattle of balls hitting the mesh
  • the existing changing rooms and toilets kept and reused
  • opening hours of 8am to 10pm Monday to Friday, and 8am to 8pm at weekends

The application papers do not state a cost. When the council first announced the plan in September 2025 it described it as a £1.25 million investment, and said a 3G surface can take up to 60 hours of use a week against about six for grass.

Why the first version was withdrawn

On 6 March the council removed the artificial pitch from its earlier planning application. It said this followed feedback from Natural England about the site’s closeness to the canal and the risk of microplastics reaching the River Kennet.

The rest of that application carried on, and the floodlights it covered, 25/02139/REG3, were approved on 19 March. That mattered because Football Association Step 6 ground grading required floodlighting to be approved before the end of March. Work to install those floodlights began in the week of 10 August.

What has changed in the new application

The rubber crumb used in a 3G surface is the reason Natural England objected. The new papers are built around keeping it on the pitch and out of the river.

The containment measures are:

  • 500mm retention boards around the whole pitch perimeter, to stop infill migrating off the surface
  • grids at every access point, to catch crumb carried out on players’ boots
  • a silt trap in the drainage run before the outfall

The drainage is the more significant change. The council’s drainage strategy confirms the site drains towards the River Kennet, which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Because of that, consultants Stantec specified two further stages of treatment:

  • secondary treatment using two proprietary units from Hydro International, a Downstream Defender Select and an Up-Flo Filter Chamber, designed to remove the majority of microplastics and suspended solids
  • tertiary treatment through a vegetated swale, slowing and spreading the water so that filtration, sedimentation and biological uptake can happen naturally

Flow off the site would be held back to 4.6 litres a second, the calculated greenfield runoff rate, using a flow control manhole. The stone base under the pitch is designed to store 892 cubic metres of water while that happens.

Ground investigation found an average of 325mm of topsoil over made ground averaging 0.825 metres and clay peat averaging 0.95 metres. Groundwater rose by between 0.2 and 1.1 metres in boreholes left open for a quarter of an hour, and the report concludes soakaways would not work on this site.

The ecological appraisal, by Aluco Ecology, puts the biodiversity net gain requirement at 1.82 units for the required 10% gain. The council says it is still working out how to deliver that, with options including improvements on other council land or buying units.

Timeline of the Faraday Road pitch decisions from September 2025 to October 2026
Graphic by The Newbury Times. Sources: West Berkshire Council news releases and the council's planning register

What it means for you

  • If you want to comment, do it by Monday 7 September. Use the comments tab on 26/01699/REG3. You need a Public Access account, which is separate from a West Berkshire “My Account” login.
  • If you live near the ground, the hours are the detail to read. The application asks for use until 10pm on weekday evenings, which is later than a grass pitch without floodlights can be used at all.
  • If you play or coach locally, nothing changes this season. The floodlights are the approved part and are going in now. The pitch itself has not been decided, and the council’s own deadline for deciding it is 7 October.
  • If the river is your concern, the documents to read are the drainage strategy and the Stantec technical note in Appendix C, not the design statement. Natural England is a statutory consultee and its response to this application had not been published as of 20 August.
  • All 17 documents are free to read on the planning register. We track local decisions on our Newbury planning page.

Sources