Town Planning Committee - Trust Annual Report 1986
In the last Annual Report we were able to enthuse over the recently published Winchester Area Local Plan as a very good basis for real progress in Winchester. It seemed that years of patient argument had at long last prevailed and we were able to congratulate the Planners on their courage in taking a fundamental change of direction. Sadly, we must now report that we are very disturbed by signs of backsliding into the old 1960s orthodoxy. Progress towards an improved Winchester now seems less likely because of the City Council's attitude to development of the Central Car Park, and a return to the bad old days of not inviting public participation until all the important decisions have been taken.
The Winchester Area Local Plan Inquiry. As we shall explain later, the heart of our argument with the City Council lies in different interpretations of some of the findings of the Public Inquiry into the WALP. The Trust submitted three papers to the Inquiry on the subjects of Offices and Employment Restraint, the Peninsular Barracks site, and General Transport Strategy.
Offices. Along the lines of the Discussion Paper on the subject published previously by the Trust, we expressed the view that offices actually earn most of Winchester's bread and butter and are, in many cases, more benign in regard to traffic generation and the quality of the built environment than most other activities (especially shopping, essential as it is in other respects to the well-being of the City). We did not, therefore, see the City's proposed blanket ban on all office development as either reasonable or likely to withstand developers' appeals to the Secretary of State. We did, however, point to particular worries with office developments, concerning scale and density of infill and the insidious growth of office deserts as single land-use areas. As a remedy we suggested a far more defensible policy of zonal planning control in which maximum limitations would be placed on size, density and proportion of a particular land-use. While it was accepted at the Inquiry that such controls were feasible, the Planners resisted the idea on the grounds of complexity, and the Inspector agreed. However, she also rejected the Planners' blanket control policy, so that the City is left with no new method of control, while its existing powers are being steadily eroded by adverse appeal decisions, which reflect the Government's policy of minimal restraint on commercial activity. A recent decision in Southgate Street extends the Westgate area office desert and demonstrates the unfortunate impotence of the present planning controls. On this subject, therefore, we broadly agreed with the City about ends but not about means.
Peninsular Barracks. The Peninsular Barracks Brief was not an allowable matter for discussion at the Inquiry, though the principles of development were debated. The Trust put the argument that the strategic consequences of the development of this very remarkable site had not been adequately investigated, particularly in relation to tourism and the other major development site in and around the Central Car Park. In hindsight our presentation lacked force and conviction, expressing our fears regarding the development without delivering constructive argument for alternatives. Like everyone else, we have spent too little time on this immensely important subject.
General Transport Strategy. The Trust concentrated most effort into its submission on the more immediate problem of the proposed development of the Central Car Park, and it is in relation to this subject that our grave concern for the future of Winchester now lies. The Trust submitted that as the Council had abandoned the highway building policies of the previous draft Plans for the City, it was in a position to experiment at improving the appearance and quality of life in the central area of the town. We argued that traffic was the key to this and that traffic is largely governed by parking provision, so that the logical experiment would involve the progressive removal of parking reached by streets where traffic is most in conflict with pedestrians, to nearby areas where the problem is less severe.
This cautious approach would have tied in nicely with the City's published intention to commission a monitoring study of the effects of the Plan, and with the tradition of incremental change which is the essence of Winchester's character. Further potential for improvement could be discerned in coupling some simple Park and Ride scheme with the experiment. It was not to be. The Inspector clearly saw the potential for experimentation, but concurred with the Planners' view that the experiment might be economically risky, even though their own proposals involved the more sudden removal of the majority of the existing car parking spaces for 3 years while the development took place. Our greatest disagreement was with the plan to bring back all these spaces into a new multi-storey car park in the centre of the town, thus perpetuating all the unpleasantness of massed traffic in streets which should be dominated by pedestrians. The Inspector, herself a Planner, whilst showing some sympathy for our views, could not perceive the illogicality of this throw-back in policy any more than could the City Planners. However, she acknowledged the basic correctness of the argument by supporting our plea that, at the very least, the Council should investigate the practicability of reversible parking provision on the central site. That is to say that a multi-storey car park on this site should if possible be designed so that it could be converted to other uses when the time comes for excluding all but essential vehicles from the surrounding roads. This recommendation went unheeded in the draft brief.
Amongst other things, the Inspector also recommended that when the actual brief for the development of the Central Car Park had been prepared, the people of Winchester should be allowed ample opportunity to express their views on what they wanted on the site. In doing so she echoed a firm commitment to this effect given by the City Council before the Inquiry.
The Brooks Development Brief. After studying the Inspector's Report, we reluctantly accepted that incremental development of the area was a lost cause due to economic pressures, but we continued to take the view that parking, other than for service vehicles and the disabled, should be excluded from the site. Not only do we oppose general parking for the environmental reasons already mentioned, but because we believe that the site cannot be developed to the standards of excellence this position warrants - either socially or aesthetically - if weighed down by the inclusion of 350 car parking spaces (an increase of 64 on the present number!) in a building which the developers would have to provide at their own expense. We strongly suspect that there are those in the Planning Department, as we know there are in the City Council, who share this view, but it is a brave Officer who will speak against the tide of establishment thinking. One thing seemed hopeful to us, and that was the knowledge that the whole matter would receive a public airing before the developers were issued with a brief.
It was therefore with complete amazement that we received news at the very last moment that the Council would decide the brief and make the first selections of developers' schemes without further reference to the public. Only when narrowed to a choice of four finished schemes would the people of Winchester have a chance to comment. When we expressed our amazement we were told that the "ample" public participation in the "proposals" envisaged by the Inspector was fully met by participation in the Winchester Area Local Plan (before the brief had been drafted), and the provision for comment on the four selected schemes (when there would no longer be any opportunity to influence what went into them). It was too late to do much about what still seems to us, at best, a most curious "interpretation" of the Inspector's words, but we were heartened to see how narrow was the majority in the City Council for this process to go ahead unchanged.
Our hopes must lie in the opportunity to influence the outcome during the months to come, by continued reasoned argument to anyone who will listen. The Brief has some good points, but in its present form it also has the seeds of mediocrity, if not complete failure.
Facilities for pedestrians. To end on a hopeful note, we can report that during discussions with the City's Chief Engineer and the Police about vehicle abuses like pavement mounting, and traffic bias at pedestrian crossing points such as the Southgate Street traffic lights, we discovered much in common. The Police, while agreeing with us, must unfortunately give priority to other matters, but recognise that public irritation over pavement parking may lead to this being given greater priority in the future. The City Engineer entirely agrees with the need for greater pedestrian dominance of central area streets and hopes that when funds permit, resurfacing in the lower part of the High Street and elsewhere may help to establish the change to pedestrian priority which is already taking place. He has also tried to persuade the County Council (which rules on this particular subject) that there should be a pedestrian crossing phase at traffic lights wherever the need is self-evident.