Chairman's Remarks - Trust Annual Report 1996
Are certain aspects of Local Government heading for trouble caused by work overload on both Councillors and Officers, and the constant requirement to prune budgets which precludes taking on any extra staff?
By virtue of the Trust's concern for the character and fabric of the City, whilst ensuring that the City is run reasonably efficiently and is a pleasant place in which to live, there are only some aspects of the City Council's work in which the Trust requires to take an interest. Also, we consider that some of the Trust's work is made more important by the absence of Parish Councils within the Wards of Winchester, leaving a gap between the private individual and the District Council. This particularly applies to Development Control, which I always regard as being the core of the Trust's work.
As an indicator of the overload with which I opened these remarks, whenever there is an unusually complicated matter or one requiring detailed examination, it is the very sensible practice of the City Council to form Working Parties. Such is the pace at which affairs are moving at the present time, there are no fewer than seven of these Working Parties that are of great interest to the Trust - let alone the many others which are of little or no concern to us. These range from strategy, such as the Winchester District Plan, the Movement and Access Panel and the Broadway/Friarsgate Planning and Transportation Study (the City Centre Plan), down through major area development Working Parties such as Peninsula Barracks and King Alfred's College, and finishing up with Working Parties studying smaller projects such as the Marston Brewery site and Peter Symond's College improvements.
Another example of overload is the gargantuan agenda for the monthly Planning Meetings, sometimes rising to the consideration of seventy - yes, seventy planning applications. These are often not as simple as they might seem at first, particularly when somebody is trying to "work the system" where some new rural storehouse seems to have sprouted features that look astonishingly like windows, and water and electricity seem to have been piped to exactly where a first floor might be! The September 1996 City Planning meeting started at 2 pm and ended at 7.40 pm!
My next point is one of abject apology for omissions made in good faith. This concerns the absence of any reference in recent newsletters and Annual Reports to the steady progress being made on Park and Ride since, I suppose, 1990.
I am sure that there are many amateur editorial writers in our membership, and we must all use differing methods of collecting our wits before launching forth. Some may use a recording of Beethoven's Fifth or the St Swithun's Street Heavy Metal Band at full volume in order to encourage their Muse; others may wrap the proverbial wet towel round their heads, and yet others may have a bottle of Glenfiddich close to hand! My personal rationale is to consider what is going seriously wrong in our City that needs urgent Trust attention. What seems to be proceeding along on apparently pre-planned lines without any strong dissension may not get a mention, especially if space is running out.
This exactly the case with Park and Ride. Studies of the early 90s all said that Winchester and Park and Ride were compatible, and also that two Park and Ride sites we required to satisfy the demand in the eastern and southern sectors. Construction of the small Pilot Scheme at Bar End started in early 1994, and the car parks opened in September 1994, in the knowledge that, if the Pilot Scheme was successful, the Full Scheme would be implemented. This involved adjacent land, including a small section of the old bypass. Within a year of opening, the Pilot Scheme was found to be very successful, and in late 1995 it was agreed to go ahead with the Full Scheme by preparing the necessary Planning Applications. All this happened according to plan, without any apparent public or other outcry until July 1996, but regrettably not reported in Trust publications the last few years - the Muse had deserted me. Sorry!
You will read later in this Annual Report of a "Plan for Winchester". This time last year we spoke of the formation of a small team to look into what would be the parameters required before such a study at Trust level could start. However, we later decided to put this team "on hold" until the City Council had held the two seminars referred to in Ray Attfield's report and we had received more guidance from the City Council. It is my personal contention that it is essential to establish assumptions on traffic before sensible progress can be made. How, for instance, can one make practical proposals for the Broadway and its surrounding streets, unless one can assume that either the Broadway will be 100% pedestrianised, or that cars will be allowed the freedom that they are allowed today, or must we assume something in between?
On the Heritage Centre front, the Stop Press news from the Heritage Lottery Fund is that we may hear our fate just before Christmas 1996, which is almost two months behind schedule. The present policy is that if we get all the grant that we are seeking, we go ahead by starting construction and raising the outstanding £70,000 needed to complete the funding of the project; if we get nothing , we will abandon the whole project and close the Heritage Centre, but if we get something in between, we shall have some hard thinking to do.
I do not think that any of us who are outside the inner circle of the Heritage Centre Management Committee have any conception of the amount of freely-given voluntary and often highly professional, work put into this project. Outside the close community those concerned with the project on a day-to-day basis, I would like, in particular, to thank David Smith of Dreweatt Neate and Andrew Smith of Andrew Smith and Son for their assistance given to us in connection with the valuation of the property.
We now sit tight, answering the Lottery Fund's additional questions as they are received, until the coloured smoke issues forth from their chimney - let us hope that we receive a worthy Christmas present!