Message from Chairman - TrustNews Summer 1993
Ernie Witts, the Hon. Treasurer of the Trust for the past five and a half years handed over his task to lain Thomson on 1 May 1993. Ernie has been a meticulous and clear-thinking treasurer who has guided the Trust's financial affairs with firmness combined with the humour and common sense that is so important to a voluntary organisation. We are most grateful.
We have also said farewell to both the Membership Secretary, Clarissa Turner, and to the Secretary, Beanie Devas, and thank them for their work for the Trust.
In welcoming our new Secretary-cum-Membership Secretary. Flavia Bateson, we have set up a small office in what was a store-room in the Heritage Centre. The results are already showing that we have made the right decision, with all the administrative functions of the Trust together in one place.
In this Newsletter you will read Harvey Cole's ideas on the current national review of local government which might well have an influence on how the Trust operates in the future.
For some time the Trust has been aware of duplication of effort and also voids of little cooperation between the Hampshire County and the Winchester City Councils.
If the County Council remains, albeit in some changed form, it is essential that these duplications and voids must be removed and clear areas of responsibility established.
If the County Council disappears and the City Council becomes part of some new unitary authority responsible directly to Whitehall, then it is most important to the Trust that responsibility for development control, roads, traffic, environment and conservation in the City of Winchester is clearly defined.
The Trust representative spoke in March at the second Public Inquiry concerning a building society which had appealed against a City Council refusal to allow it to move into what is rapidly becoming a building society ghetto' in the heart of the pedestrianised precinct.
Again the City lost the appeal, and again had to pay a significant proportion of the costs. The City cannot afford to refuse any similar applications in the future and has therefore virtually lost control of the balance of shopping in our High Street. The floodgates are now open, and we can expect more building societies to take advantage from the recession which has caused ordinary retail shops, formerly in the pedestrianised precinct, to close and leave their premises vacant.
This is not right. The Trust will do its utmost to expose this state of affairs, and will encourage our City Council to seek advice from other historic towns who might be suffering the same fate.
View of Winchester from the Law Courts: drawing by Andrew Rutter (An idea for a Christmas Card?)