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Lib Dem Council Group Leader, Kelsie Learney & Prospective MP, Martin Tod, discuss the new plans for Barton Farm

Responding to the new consultation on building on Barton Farm, announced by Cala Homes, and their intention to submit a planning application by the end of the year, Martin Tod, Liberal Democrat Prospective MP, commented:

“The last thing we need is a plan for Barton Farm rushed through in the dying days of the current Labour Government. Both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have promised to get rid of central housing targets, so Cala appear to be trying to get approval while the local Conservative plans for Winchester are in chaos, and before Labour are kicked out. Whatever the merits of the proposals, now is not the time to be pushing them through. Building on green fields should be absolutely the last resort in the Winchester, not something forced through before an election.”

more … ]]> Responding to the news that Winchester City Council’s Cabinet Meeting on October 14 will be discussing a proposal to release 3 green field sites for building – Pitt Manor, Francis Gardens and Spring Gardens – in order to cover a shortfall of 294 houses caused by the Conservative County Council’s decision to delay development of the Police Headquarters site in Winchester, Liberal Democrat Prospective MP, Martin Tod, commented:

“The appalling thing is that this plan calls for building on green fields when there are town-centre sites, such as the Police Headquarters, which could take the number of houses the Government is asking for.”

“The combination of Labour’s top-down planning system and the Conservative County Council’s decision to delay building houses on the police station site look set to condemn green field areas like Pitt Manor and Francis Gardens to be being built on – even though local people don’t want it.”

“The Liberal Democrats have wanted to scrap top-down housing targets for several years. But, despite the targets, we wouldn’t be in this position if the Conservatives running the County Council had moved ahead with their plan for the Police Headquarters as was originally promised.”

more … ]]> There’s a big problem with the Winchester City Council survey which they’ve used to conclude that people locally want step-change growth or to build on Barton Farm.

The problem is that their survey doesn’t include enough people from the city itself. As a consequence, the results are totally misleading.

Even though half the people in the district live in or near Winchester, only 2 of the council’s 7 consultation meetings – the ones in the Guildhall and in Littleton – were in or near Winchester.

As a result, only around 1 in 5 of those they asked to complete their survey came from the Winchester area – a much smaller proportion than they would need for the survey to be representative.

The public meeting held in Winchester and the Lib Dem survey of Winchester residents showed that most people in the town are opposed to ‘step change’. They also don’t favour building on Barton Farm.

Part of the problem has been the Conservatives’ continuing weak management of the consultation process for the ‘Local Development Framework’.

They originally proposed only one meeting in Winchester in a room that would have seated 120 people. Lib Dem and public pressure managed to get a second meeting at Littleton and to get the city meeting moved to a larger room, but it still was too little too late.

The Conservatives should not conclude that Winchester wants a step-change or to build on Barton Farm based on a small unrepresentative sample. It would be completely wrong to decide anything until they give proper weight to the views of residents in the city itself.

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One piece of good news today.  The Government has made it clear that Micheldever Station is not going to be one of its new eco-towns.

I’m really pleased.  This was an eco-town proposal that wasn’t eco.  It was going to have an appalling effect on traffic congestion and emissions.  It was going to concrete over the countryside – rather than using brown field land as per the original specification.

In essence, it was a half-baked greenwash of a bad idea that had previously been repeatedly rejected.

Most of the credit for this belongs with the Dever Society and particularly their very impressive vice-chair, Tessa Robertson, who got a big round of applause today at the celebration meeting (or, more accurately, celebration walk across some fields that were threatened with being concreted over).

There was also huge public opposition.  The online petition against the proposed Micheldever Station eco-town got more support than any of the other petitions around the country opposing local eco-towns.

The Dever Society is intending to continue campaigning until Zurich Insurance and Eagle Star give up on their plans.  I certainly intend to keep doing what I can to support them. They need members and support: the more the better.  If you’d like to join, the membership form is here.

more … ]]> I went to the annual general meeting of the Dever Society last night. Steve Tilbury, the Head of Operations at Winchester City Council was there and made an excellent and informative presentation. As part of it, he referenced an article by David Blackman and Joey Gardiner in Building magazine – which accurately captures the general mood locally about the Micheldever Station Eco-Town:

The list of sites put forward by developers reads like a greatest hits of planning applications gone by. The communities department refuses to publish the list, but an investigation by Building has uncovered nine, all of which bring on a sense of deja vu. Micheldever, for example, the proposed site of a 12,500-home town, was put forward to two Hampshire structure plan inquiries in the late nineties, before being rejected in 2000 …

It looks like developers and councils have leaped at the chance to build on sites that have lain fallow for decades, dusting off old schemes, tarting them up with low-carbon jargon and bolting on eco-bling. Conservation groups on the other hand, are horrified.

Elsewhere in Building magazine, Mark Brinkley confirms the traffic concerns I posted about earlier this month (from a position of considerably greater expertise!) ; in particular, he highlights the consequences of the Government’s requirement that “Eco-towns must be new settlements – separate and distinct from existing towns but well linked to them”:

Why throw that into the mix? What is remotely eco about it? In terms of transportation, building away from existing urban centres is very bad news. It requires much more infrastructure and adds to travel and commuting times. Why abandon the policy thrusts towards urban extensions and regenerating brownfield?

The CPRE has also come out against the proposal. My friend, and former neighbour at University, Tom Oliver, is now their head of rural policy and was quoted in this Independent article which summarises many of the arguments against the Micheldever proposals (although is a bit light on the transport issues).

Tom Oliver, the head of countryside policy for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said such a new town “would overshadow a huge swathe of rural Hampshire”. He added: “The site has been rejected repeatedly as a possible major new development and has only returned as a figment of corporate opportunism. To decorate this proposal with ‘eco-bling’ is cynical and undermines the credibility of the Government’s eco-towns competition.”

One final tidbit. The news broke today that Tony Blair has been signed up by Zurich – the parent company of the Micheldever development – as an environmental advisor. Given Blair’s record on the environment, I’m tempted to repeat Tom Lehrer’s reaction when he heard that Kissinger had won the Nobel peace prize.

Because Eagle Star’s plan to trash the environment and increase the Winchester district’s carbon footprint will likely make them north of £1 billion were they to get the go-ahead, there’s plenty of money in this project (at least on their side) for endless consultancy (possibly including Blair) to try and push the project through – even if they assume a very low chance of success. Although the Dever Society has done a great job of fundraising, Eagle Star is an incredibly expensive company to take on, so if you feel like becoming a friend of the Dever Society in order to support their opposition to the proposals, the membership form is here. If you haven’t already signed the petition against the Micheldever development, you can do so here.

PS: I particularly like the term ‘eco-bling’ used by Tom and in the Building magazine article. In the US last week, I heard another new eco-term for the first time: ‘green-collar worker’. When I contacted Tom after reading his quotes in the Independent article, I emailed to ask (among other things) if he was one. He answered happily to the lunch I suggested in the email, but, to date, is strangely silent on the ‘green collar’ issue.

more … ]]> After all our previous efforts, the council has finally moved the Winchester consultation meeting for the Local Development Framework to the Guildhall.

This means that there now spaces available on January 17th.

As mentioned previously, this is a hugely important paper for the future of the Winchester area setting out the strategy for major change across the District over the next twenty years – particularly in terms of planning and housing. It’s essential that anyone who is interested should be able to get a place in one of the consultation meetings.

There’s been an incredible level of interest. The meetings in Alresford, Winchester and Wickham have had to be moved to larger buildings and a new meeting has been set up in Littleton.

You can book a place at any of the remaining meetings via this online form.

more … ]]> After all our pressure back in December, the good news is that there is now going to be an extra consultation workshop for the City Council’s Local Development Framework in Littleton Village Hall.

But the two other consultations in the new Winchester Constituency – in Alresford and Winchester’s Discovery Centre are already fully booked out – with 9 or more days to go before the meeting itself.

We still need at least one more consultation in the City itself. The Local Development Framework, while sounding boring, has huge implications for our city over the next 20 years.

As I said back in December:

The proposals on the table (including an effective assumption in favour of developing on Barton Farm, Abbots Barton and Pitt Manor, and including possible further expansion north and east of the current Barton Farm site, on Teg Down, on Bushfield Camp and further into Pitt Manor Farm) are going to be hugely controversial across the city and also have a potentially huge impact in areas outside the city, such as Oliver’s Battery, Badger Farm, Kings Worthy and Compton.

We urgently need more consultation meetings to ensure that local people’s voices are properly heard.

more … ]]> The City Council has announced their consultation plans for Winchester City Council’s Local Development Framework.

This is a hugely important paper for the future of the Winchester area. To quote the paper itself, it covers:

what need(s) to change across the District over the next twenty years

and covers:

• The broad location and balance of development across the authority’s area,
• Management of the housing supply,
• The balance between employment and housing
• The delivery of affordable housing

Despite the critical importance of this strategy, it is currently proposed to have only two consultation meetings in the new Winchester constituency – one in Alresford and one in the new Discovery Centre. And the one in the Discovery Centre is in a room that contains fewer than 180 people (or 120 people if it’s organised for a workshop as planned).

The proposed consultation in Alresford makes sense, but the proposed consultation for the rest of the area around the city of Winchester is completely inadequate.

For perspective, over 450 people turned up to discuss the Tower Arts Centre in the Guildhall and over 200 people turned up to Littleton Village Hall to discuss the closure of their post office. Over 100 people turned up to discuss the Oliver’s Battery village design statement!

The proposals on the table (including an effective assumption in favour of developing on Barton Farm, Abbots Barton and Pitt Manor, and including possible further expansion north and east of the current Barton Farm site, on Teg Down, on Bushfield Camp and further into Pitt Manor Farm) are going to be hugely controversial across the city and also have a potentially huge impact in areas outside the city, such as Oliver’s Battery, Badger Farm, Kings Worthy and Compton.

There’s also a problem that not every option has been properly examined. Some villages are asking for faster expansion than proposed in the paper so that they can continue to support their local school. And important issues such as the Micheldever ‘eco-town’ are not being given the scrutiny they deserve.

In light of this, the proposal to have a single meeting in the Winchester area, in a room that holds 120 people, to discuss the future of the Winchester area over the next 20 years, is a total joke.

more … ]]> Another doorstep conversation about planning today – this time in King’s Worthy.

Unsurprisingly, the first item to come up was the Elan development. I remember once when Michaela and I were driving through King’s Worthy saying to her – ‘There’s been quite a controversial development here – see if you can spot it!’ It didn’t prove too difficult. I’m a great believer in the importance of design and, if selected, would want to work closely with Liberal Democrat councillors on both councils, and the public, both to achieve high quality design for our towns and villages, and to campaign with them against inappropriate development.

The other topic we talked about was the need for extra facilities to go alongside new developments. The member I was talking to explained that while the population of King’s Worthy had doubled over the last 20 years, the available facilities and infrastructure hadn’t.

Unfortunately, this is all too common in rural areas of Hampshire and a clear consequence of the shift of powers away from local communities and local authorities and the restriction in their ability to have a true say in how their areas are run.

more … ]]> I was going along Bodycoats Road in Chandler’s Ford today when I had a sudden attack of déjà vu. I was sure I had been there before.

It couldn’t have been from the 2005 election, since most of our work in Romsey during the 2005 General Election was in Palestine, up in the north of the constituency, and in Romsey itself.

It then struck me that it must have been from the by-election in 2000, since on one Sunday a team I’d brought from Ealing Acton & Shepherds Bush was sent out to Chandler’s Ford. This was confirmed when I visited someone who I remembered canvassing!

My main memory of the Romsey by-election (aside from the result) was being so infuriated by William Hague’s speech about asylum speakers shortly before the election that the next morning, I called my boss, booked a day’s holiday for election day and then, on election day, went and pounded the streets until the polls closed.

As in Winchester, several of the people I met in Chandler’s Ford mentioned planning as an issue. On the one hand, young families who were born and grew up in the area are forced out by high house prices. Many couples who now live outside the area bring their children back to be christened in St Boniface because they still feel that Chandler’s Ford is home. On the other, no-one wants to see over-development and too much stress put on local services and infrastructure. As is so often the case, Government centralisation has a lot to do with the frustration that people feel in this area. Councillors are too often forced to act as an arm of government, rather than advocates of their local area. Everyone locally, including local councillors, ends up feeling that no-one is listening. Pushing true and full decision-making down to a more local level has to be the way forward to help release this tension.

Finally to the US elections. It all seems very much as the Democrats were predicting when I went to meet them back in June. My brother has just taken American citizenship and lives in the marginal state of Virginia, where they appear to be having the closest senate race. If the Democrats win Virginia by one vote, I will be very proud.