Development Control - Trust Annual Report 1996
Those of our members who read the local press must be all too well aware of the major schemes that are happening in Winchester, such as the developments on the Peninsula Barracks and the site at West Downs, both of which are also visibly under construction, and the proposals for the Marston Brewery depot, Hyde Street, which are still under discussion - and are likely to continue to be so for some time to come.
These developments will all clearly increase the City's housing stock, but it is interesting that the weekly planning applications show that there is also a less obvious trend towards a general increase in the use of city centre properties for residential accommodation. These include flats over commercial premises (such as over Habel's in Jewry Street), something that was said to be impossible in the past for security and insurance reasons, and this change is much to be welcomed because of the life it will maintain in the city centre after the shops have closed. Other changes are perhaps less welcome because they replace the shops themselves and the loss of too many commercial premises cannot be good for the economic future of Winchester. On the whole the shops that are lost tend to be less central, being situated in the City Road area, or in Highcliffe and Stanmore, but their loss bodes ill for the residents of these more remote districts.
An example of mixed use of this kind is the proposed scheme for 12 and 13 The Square (at present occupied by Holland & Barrett and Phase Eight), a Listed Building that runs through to Little Minster Street. The rear of No 13 is in need of a great deal of expensive remedial work to make it structurally sound and, with reduced grant funding, this scale of repair is something that only a large and wealthy commercial enterprise wishing to get a toe-hold in Winchester is prepared to pay. Two such organisations have been found, both prepared to foot the bill for the repairs and both wishing to open a large bar/restaurant, with flats above which would be accessed from Little Minster Street.
This application is typical of the dilemmas that face an historic city such as Winchester: to allow the buildings to deteriorate still further could lead to their eventual loss, which would be extremely detrimental to the character of The Square and of Little Minster street, but to allow the virtual gutting of the interior of the lower floors would destroy the character of the buildings themselves; to have the residential use of the currently unused upper floors would be a very good thing, but to have a large bar/restaurant may be equally undesirable in an area where there is already no shortage of eating and drinking establishments, especially for those residents already living in the area. So what is best for Winchester as a whole? In an ideal world it would be to grant-aid the repairs, but this is an option that has become increasingly unlikely now that grant funding is being drastically cut back by the Authorities.
A similar mixed use, but without these drawbacks, is being proposed for a Listed Building next to St Peter's Church in Jewry Street. This used to be the Georgian Restaurant, but has been empty and boarded-up for many years, so the application to turn the ground floor rooms at the Jewry Street end of the building into offices and to use the rest for residential accommodation is much to be welcomed, especially as the aim of the sensitive conversion seems to be to avoid subdividing or altering the existing rooms any more than is absolutely necessary.
The Trust is currently very concerned over the apparently avowed intent of the Hampshire County Council's road engineers to disfigure as much of Winchester's residential areas as they can in the shortest possible time; an intent that seems to be approached with increased vigour if the street lies within a conservation area. "Traffic calming" is the name of the game, and the means now being proposed is to throw as many different materials, colours and surfaces at the road concerned plus all the variations of pinch-points there are in the book, and then for good measure to add bollards and signs wherever a stretch of road remains in its original state. Never mind what it will look like or whether it is actually necessary, traffic calming is the "in" activity and so residential streets will become piebald stretches of buff anti-skid surfaces, uncomfortable blister pavings and a plethora of other surfaces to indicate where to cross and where it is dangerous to do so - these are usually at junctions where it is clear to all concerned that care should be taken.
The Trust is not averse to trying to control the speed and number of cars using the "rat-runs" being used after the traffic routes in the city centre were changed, but now that the system has settled down the number of cars using these routes also seems to have levelled down to a more acceptable number. Although this may be slightly higher than before, in many cases the main problems only occur in rush hours, which in Winchester are of shorter duration than in other larger towns. The Trust has questioned whether such visually damaging and expensive traffic-calming methods should be used in an historic city such as Winchester, particularly by a county authority said to be very strapped for cash. Could it not be just as effective to provide pedestrian crossings only where crucially needed and to reduce the speed limit to say 15 or 20 mph, backed up by random crackdowns and heavy fines for speeding motorists?
The Trust suggests that this would be a less expensive, and certainly more environmentally acceptable, solution for calming traffic than the schemes currently proposed by the County highway engineers.
The Trust is also at a loss to know why traffic signs seem to proliferate in Winchester, in contrast to many other towns and cities with similar requirements. As a result of a visit to Windsor, Alton and Petersfield, attended by 13 Trust members, the Vice Chairman of the City Traffic and Engineering Committee, and the City officer responsible for street furniture, a small group of Trust members is investigating these problems. Why, for instance, does the pedestrianised Peascod Street in Windsor get by with a single sign at one end giving three pieces of information, and a no-entry sign at the other - nothing else!