A huge 1,400 home development that brings Wokingham south of the railway track for the first time has been approved.

Wokingham Borough Council (WBC) has finally approved plans for the huge development after being first submitted in 2019, and then discussed by the council in 2021.

Kier Ventures Ltd and Miller Homes will build 1,434 homes along with a new primary school, local centre, and play area.

It will also have open green spaces and a new road to cater for the development. This will be situated on land south of waterloo crescent and will reach between the town’s boundary with Bracknell Forest and Finchampstead.

New bus stops will be built to ensure access to public transport.

The major proposal has been approved more than three years after the project was first discussed at a Wokingham Borough Council meeting. In May 2021, the council’s planning committee approved the project for more than 1,000 homes that expand the town to the south, across the railway which goes from Reading to London Waterloo, and Wokingham to Gatwick Airport.

But for development to go ahead, further details of the project had to be approved by the council – and they were finally approved on Friday, July 19.

There will also be new roads connecting the development as well as a new bridge over the railway line from Montague Park to the north and a connection onto Finchampstead road to the west.

It comes as part of the South Wokingham Strategic Development Location, which the authority says is an ‘urban extension of Wokingham town’. Developers hope building will be complete by 2033.

The council has granted permission for the development to be carried out subject to conditions being met.

The building must begin within three years from the date of formal permission being given, on July 19. Details of the appearance, landscaping, layout and scale of the development must be submitted to the council for approval.

Details are not yet known over they type of housing it will be, but it must deliver 35 per cent of affordable homes, appropriately distributed across the development.

In the original proposal, developers said that the location’s ‘proximity to numerous community, education, retail and health facilities and services, as well as extensive employment opportunities’ makes it ‘highly sustainable’.

This is amongst the largest of many housing developments planned to take place across the borough, including the 2,000-home Arborfield Garrison and other smaller developments in Finchampstead. Many of these have been met with concerns from residents about the changing landscapes of Wokingham.