TrustNews Mar 20
Civic Voice
The City of Winchester Trust was one of the first members of Civic Voice when it was launched nearly 10 years ago to represent the civic societies of England as a successor to the Civic Trust which was considered to have become too detached and unrepresentative of its members. One of its founding principles was to listen to and express the views of its member societies and it has been faithful in keeping in touch and surveying the membership frequently about the work it should do.
Influencing Government
An area of importance to the members is influencing government about planning policies and the way the planning system functions, too often generating opposition and confrontation when significant development is proposed. So, much of Civic Voice’s time is spent in lobbying government ministers and members of parliament through the all party parliamentary group for civic societies which our MP, Steve Brine, agreed to join at the Trust's request. The growing influence of Civic Voice is indicated by the governments invitation to be one of the members of the government's Future High Street Task Force addressing the decline of high streets in England, its role being to provide advice on community engagement (see www.highstreettaskforce.org.uk); also it met the members of the Building Better Building Beautiful commission whose final report, Living with Beauty, was published on 30th January (vvwvv.gov.uk/government/publications/living-with-beauty-report).
Civic Voice Manifesto 2020-2023
When the 235 member societies were surveyed by Civic Voice in 2019 it was clear there was widespread dissatisfaction and distrust in the planning system, with 80% feeling developers do not engage effectively with the community and 72% saying the same about local authorities. Civic Voice’s latest manifesto has been framed to address this by moving away from confrontation and adopting collaboration, participation and conversations. We have experienced good and bad engagement in the planning process in Winchester where the excellent community planning weekend about the regeneration of central Winchester, organised by the consultant architects and master planners, JTP, in March 2017 is to be contrasted with the unsatisfactory consultation process on the Station Approach development which has resulted in the current confrontation between the Trust and the City Council.
The manifesto promotes Winchester’s experience of JTP’s approach to collaboration by: advocating a number of specific proposals including early and meaningful engagement with communities, which helps to connect people more strongly with their own community and increases trust in the planning system; requiring developers and local authorities to publish a summary of the views of communities and responses to the comments made; give community representatives a meaningful voice at every stage of the planning process; expand the role of neighbourhood planning into wider community plans setting out the vision for an area.
Local authorities have been subject to years of cuts in their central government funding and while austerity may be coming to an end for the NHS and education it is not clear that this will extend to local government. It is generally agreed that many more houses need to be built but it is vital to ensure we achieve a high standard of development that gains the approval of the community. The manifesto recognises that to succeed in this aim, local authorities need more resources to improve the way the planning process functions and ensures good community involvement and decision making. The manifesto also calls for more resources so local authorities can take action to address the degraded and neglected state of conservation areas. For many years they have not been able to conduct appraisals of conservation areas to assess their condition nor prepare improvement action plans; unfortunately this is the situation we are experiencing in Winchester.
John Beveridge