Partnership Projects - 2020 Group - TrustNews Dec 11
From time to time the Trust works in close partnership with other like-minded organisations and you may recall the workinggroup we formed with WinACC to formulate an attractive and sustainable vision for Winchester by 2020. This was triggered by the exciting challenge of the Solent Centre’s ‘24 Hours to Save Winchester’ (TN 6&9/10). Our time was then quickly taken over by the need to respond to WCC’s Blueprint initiative (TN 6/11), which led first to the big public meeting we held in the Guildhall last November and then to our written response, which included Ten Principles for all future developments in Winchester. These were accepted by the City Council officers as sound guidelines, but they said that as all responses had tended to set out what they should not do, could we come back with something we thought they should do, especially in connection with the need for housing?
We set three architect members experienced with development the task of looking at Winchester and saying how growth could be accommodated by 2020 in line with the Ten Principles. They, and particularly Paul Bulkeley, worked on the project and with a small grant from WCC, we were able to support his digital presentation of a three-part scheme that we described as ‘blue-sky’ thinking. Instead of encroaching further on the City’s precious setting, Paul’s solution discovered three areas in the town that are under-used and unattractive, but ideally placed for people to live, work and play. His scheme showed how these areas could be regenerated to provide up to 2000 homes (mixed with employment) within easy walking distance of both the centre and the country, and at the same time greatly improve the appearance of the radial roads through Winnall, Bar End and Andover Road. The presentation has been made to various groups of people including, mostly recently, Winchester councillors and senior officers. On every occasion the ideas have been met with enthusiasm, and we hope they will be adopted as part of the City’s long-term thinking.
Winchester and its Setting
Another joint project has been with Hampshire Gardens Trust because they share our enthusiasm for Winchester’s remarkable relationship with its uniquely beautiful setting. It is a curious fact that the local authorities have tended to produce appraisals of landscape and townscape as separate unrelated documents, with no recognition of the vital interaction between the two. In the Winchester and its Setting Report of 1989, which both Trusts initiated and helped to sponsor, the groundbreaking approach was taken of considering the impact of one ‘scape’ upon the other. Unfortunately the Report never became a statutory document (though subsequent similar reports have in other parts of the country), so although it is now considered a valuable guide by WCC, it has no standing in planning law. To give the Report a stronger role would need a process of updating followed by public consultation, and there are no funds or resources to do this at the present time.
Following on from the publication of Winchester; Heart of a City, we therefore decided it would help everyone’s understanding of the situation if there were a brief, well-illustrated appraisal of Winchester’s setting. Together with the Hampshire Gardens Trust, we produced a brief for what we believed is needed, and the original heart-of-a-city editorial team agreed to take this on. Within weeks they have produced the text and illustrations for a 12 page booklet that is about to be printed at the expense of the two Trusts. We propose to distribute this widely, and it will be available to members for the cost of postage, or can be downloaded from the Trust’s website or picked up at the Heritage Centre on a Monday or Wednesday morning.