Current Planning Issues - TrustNews Dec 11
The Trust Policy Group’s members have been monitoring each stage of the Winchester City Council’s ‘Blueprint exercise’ throughout the year and we have attended the relevant Council meetings to put forward the Trust’s concerns and try to influence what will actually appear in the final documents. We have also kept a close eye on the current appeal relating to proposals for 200 houses at Pitt Manor, at the top of Romsey Road, and the Trust is appearing at the Local Inquiry with our objections to that scheme. The Pitt area is particularly vulnerable and the Trust will again be stressing how development there on a gentle south-westward slope would be visible from the bridleway which skirts the boundary and from distant viewpoints and would also have a detrimental effect on the green corridor approach to Winchester from Romsey.
Trust members are probably now familiar with the ongoing controversy about the proposals from Cala Homes for major housing development at Barton Farm. That decision has been passed back to the City Council by the Secretary of State to let them finish the work on their Local Plan. The Trust never wished to see this important green wedge developed, but knew it was always probable once the land was formally designated as a major development area. We have sought assurances that the City will now negotiate a more appropriate scheme, a scheme of which we can be proud so that the loss of some of the wedge will in time feel of much less significance. The Trust suggested a housing layout on the 18th and 19th century models – streets and squares that people love – at a higher density that would be more sustainable, use less land and be better landscaped, so that the area will remain a good place to walk and retain at least a semblance of the wedge with a tree belt along Andover Road. We will see if this can be achieved now that the City looks as if will be formally allocating Barton Farm in its Local Plan for 2,000 dwellings.
Our major new concern is the Council’s latest proposal to define Bushfield Camp as an ‘Opportunity Site’ in its new plan. We have reiterated our adamant objection to this inclusion of Bushfield in the Local Plan. The Council admits that the site is a sensitive location, in the gap between Winchester and Compton and that the South Downs National Park lies immediately to the south east. Although it stresses that any development at Bushfield Camp could have a ‘significant effect’ on the River Itchen Special Area of Conservation it nevertheless concludes that “the characteristics of the site may suit a form of development that requires such a unique location, possibly business or institutional uses”. We welcome the fact that there is no longer any specific reference to a ‘Knowledge Park’ but it seems dangerous to include this sensitive site for which there is no known use. We believe it would be disastrous, whatever the constraints, to include this as an opportunity site because it sounds like an invitation to any developer reading the Plan. The word ‘opportunity’ is not an official planning term and seems to have been picked up from another Authority’s Plan, where for all we know the circumstances were quite different.