Development Control - Trust Annual Report 1993
"May you live in interesting times!" This old Chinese curse is currently of particular relevance to residents of Winchester, for even if they can ignore the interesting events abroad the changes proposed for their immediate environment may turn out to be something of a curse for us all.
Winchester faces a period of potential change unequalled since the time of the proposal to demolish one side of North Walls to make way for a dual-carriage ring road. Had this scheme been carried through, Winchester would now be very different, since the wide roads envisaged by the road engineers would have meant the demolition of buildings in a variety of areas, and the consequent loss of much of the City's character. Fortunately this was prevented, to a large extent due to the activities of the Trust, and all that remains to mark the proposal is the barren width at the Record Office end of Sussex Street. But it was a very close call, and we were within a whisker of having the City centre isolated from a large proportion of its residents by a ring of speeding vehicles.
Since then many changes have taken place in Winchester, some good and some not so good. Vehicles were forbidden access to the High Street and its adjoining streets, much to the distress of the Chamber of Commerce who were convinced the shoppers would fade away as a result. This did not in fact happen, because the city centre became a more pleasant place and people consequently spent more time there - it is all too easy now to forget how dangerous and noisy this narrow street was when it was shared with through traffic. The face of the High Street has changed as a result of redevelopments that include the Woolworth site and the building now housing Laura Ashley; sizeable schemes, such as the Leisure Centre, the Record Office and the Hampshire County Council Information Office, may have caused comment, but they have not had much effect on Winchester as a whole. It takes larger schemes than these, especially if they generate a lot of traffic, really to change the way the City functions.
Two have already happened: the Sainsbury superstore at Badger Farm and The Brooks Shopping Centre. The first must have changed the shopping habits of many of Winchester's residents, and the second appears to have distorted the structure of commercial activities in the High Street to such an extent that only building societies can now afford to move into the vacant properties. While this second effect is to some extent due to recession, it should have been obvious to decision makers that such a large disturbance to the centre of gravity of the city's commercial activity would have some kind of reciprocal effect on the more distant reaches of the High Street, and the results have been compounded by the malaise of the economy as a whole.
These unfortunate consequences have not been helped by changes in the planning guidelines permeating down from central government, that building societies should not be thought of as different from shops selling shoes or clothes. The City, actively supported by the Trust, fought the appeals by the Abbey National and the Woolwich to move their activities to the Pentice stretch of the High Street, to no avail: the appeal was allowed, the floodgates were opened and our main shopping street is now awash with building societies. The Trust would argue that guidelines appropriate for a modem city centre are not right for the heart of an historic city like Winchester, where the visual environment is especially vulnerable to invasion by the corporate logos favoured by building societies and national commercial chains. While this ruling will certainly have a short-term visual effect on the High Street it may possibly also have a longer-term adverse effect, not yet wholly appreciated, on the area's commercial viability.
There is, however, no doubt that over the next few years Winchester will be materially affected by at least three large impending schemes making major alterations to traffic flows and people's activities in ways that will influence how the City functions and consequently its, and our, future.
Apart from the obvious upheaval of the M3, Winchester is currently under siege by no less than four supermarket developers. Tesco at Bar End, Waitrose on the site of the Cattle Market in Andover Road, Safeway at Pitt Manor, and on a site at Winnall, where an outline application by Wyncote Developments plc and the Church Commissioners proposes that a store with a greater floor area and more car-parking space than Tesco's should be built. The Trust opposed the Bar End superstore for the following reasons; briefly, these were the disastrous visual effect it would have on the Bar End approach into the City and the environmental damage that would he caused by the traffic the store would cause. The Winnall application is at the time of writing unsupported by environmental impact and traffic reports and no drawings of the proposed building are available, so it is not yet possible to make informed comments on the scheme. Our initial reaction is that it is perhaps too large and that its effect on the central gyratory traffic flow could well be little better than that of the Tesco scheme, since all shoppers other than those living in the eastern part of Winchester would approach and leave the store via the centre of the City. This would not be the case to such an extent with the smaller Waitrose store, but this would have considerable implications for the partially residential area around it, and the Trust has yet to be convinced that the routes approaching the site and the nearby junction, where five roads meet, can take the strain of the additional traffic that would be generated by the store.
Additional traffic will also be one of the most apparent effects of the Peninsula Barracks development, which is one reason why the Trust supports the lower density of the alternative scheme recently proposed for the site. Members will need no explanation why the Trust favours the retention of the existing buildings to the new ones of the scheme that has been under discussion over the past years, and will no doubt support our efforts to get the new scheme a fair hearing. While additional traffic is an aspect that may cause concern, it is the style of architecture and layout of the West Downs School development that the Trust would most like to see changed, since it is felt that both are very uncharacteristic of Winchester as a whole. Together these two schemes total a large percentage of the land available for development in Winchester, and they are therefore bound to make a considerable difference to the way the city functions.
The same is true of the City Council's Park & Ride scheme, due to start in pilot form in the spring. The Trust supports this as strongly as it objected last year to the additional parking proposed for the Cathedral Close, and is proud to have been quoted by the appeal inspector when he ruled against this request for parking in this central area.
These certainly are interesting times for Winchester, and we wait with bated breath to see what the future has in store for us - or perhaps more appropriately we should say, which store?