Chairman's Miscellany - TrustNews March 10
Since I wrote in the December issue of TrustNews, our time and effort have been absorbed greatly by planning and development matters. The largest of these related to Barton Farm and you will find a lengthy and informative article in later pages.
I want to use that as an example of the amount of time and energy which has been given by members of the Trust to this substantial threat to Winchester. In the early stages of the Developer’s consultations, members attended various workshops and other meetings. Then in January, CALA Homes gave a very full presentation at the Heritage Centre to some twenty members of the Planning Advisory Group and the Trust Council. That presentation and discussion lasted for about four hours and afterwards Shione Carden laboured to render our collective view into a submission to the Planning Department. I have pressed her for an estimate of the time she spent on that and in setting up the meeting and she tells me ten hours. I suspect that is too modest. Add to that the time spent by those who attended the presentation and, earlier, the workshops and a large figure emerges. We must be grateful that such a level of commitment is available to the Trust.
Looming now is an application to build on a large area at Pitt on Romsey Road. We did not like what we saw of this earlier and I anticipate more time will be devoted to that in the next few weeks. We also recently learnt of the unexpected placing into administration of Thornfields and resulting halting of progress on the Silver Hill development. The Trust is taking a Baldwinesque view of “Wait and See” on this and certainly fears the possibility of a complete abandonment of the scheme or piecemeal development.
This TrustNews features “eyesores and delights”, which is also the theme of our winter talk on 8th April. Let us know what pleases and upsets you about our wonderful city.
Finally this edition of TrustNews has more pages than usual and our thanks must go to the authors and the production team for the time and effort this all takes.