General - Trust Annual Report 1971
The continued existence of Winchester poses a dilemma. Are we to compromise with modernity and fill her with motor cars, factories, offices and supermarkets or leave her alone to potter down the years as a tourist attraction, part archaeological remainder, her mighty cathedral a mere spectacle, her Georgian streets the subject for greetings cards, and reduced for ever to cheap banalities. Is Winchester to be a lovely backwater, an artistic inutility keeping industry at arm's length ? Plans and statistics are produced while Winchester waits half modernised and half a revival, a centre of art and scholarship in one of the most glorious settings in England, through which a plan has been drawn up to drive a six lane motorway.
The Inquiry into the M3 has been the dominating event of the year. Experience has shown that a planning Inquiry tends to be a very unequal struggle. The authorities have the opportunity of being able to deal all the aces to their own hand, fully assisted by legal advocates. Their strategy for outmanoeuvering their opponents can be prepared months before the Inquiry, and is based on extensive past experience and an enormous fund of technical expertise.
It is the first duty of objectors to object to any part of the proposals which are against the public interest. To expect them to state alternatives borders on the impertinent, when the Road Construction Unit has already amassed the necessary information at the taxpayers' expense, and can use whatever parts suit their own book while ignoring the rest.
Objectors, on the other hand, have had neither the time nor the expert knowledge to put forward alternatives in more than general terms, and must concentrate on sound reasons why the road should not follow the proposed route.
A favourite attitude of the authorities and their advocates is to stress that the formidable array of experts which they have mustered is bound to be right and the evidence they produce overwhelming.
It is however easy to miss the point that there are many different ways of solving problems, and that another group of experts would find an entirely different solution.
Although on the face of it the preferred route could be considered the best from the point of view of economic return, it is nevertheless carried through as though Winchester does not exist, provides only two additional traffic lanes from Easton Lane to Compton, reduces the effectiveness of Winchester's existing bypass, requires a new network of roads to distribute traffic in its catchment area and concentrates the traffic into the city instead of dispersing it over the seven possible points of access which now exist. Neither the port authority nor the Road Haulage Association wants it on the eastern side of the city. The proposals would clearly worsen the traffic situation. The unhappy inhabitants of Odiham and Malmesbury have already discovered to their cost that to be astride a motorway causes an unbearable traffic increase. Winchester would have two such connections.
The Trust was very ably represented by Mr. Roger Brooks, and our association with the Parish of Compton and Shawford strengthened the objection. It was through this connection that the Trust was able to make use of the information circulated by the Clerk to the County Council and including the report of the County Planning Officer.