Tag: Front Garden

I’m in favour of houses being designed to be as energy efficient as possible, but I do have some concerns about the designs that feature in Kevin McCloud’s initial thoughts for his Hab Housing company’s front garden development. Both in the gallery on his company’s website and in the photographs shown at his recent event in Swindon, wood-clad buildings feature heavily.

Mr McCloud has made a comparison between Swindon and Harlow. As I’ve noted before, I have lived in a couple places where architects have experimented, of which Harlow was one. Both those places featured many, many wood-clad buildings. Those in the St Ann’s area of Nottingham were built in the early 1970s… and demolished at the turn of the millennium. The many wood-clad buildings in Harlow have lasted somewhat longer, having been build in the 1950s and 1960s, but the majority have had the wood replaced with uPVC. The few that remain in wood look decidedly tatty.

Wood may look nice when newly painted or varnished, as in the photographs that Mr McCloud uses, but it’s a high maintenance building material and that look doesn’t last. Swindon has enough problems with flawed housing designs, such as the sytem-built pre-cast reinforced concrete houses of Parks, Pinehurst and Penhill. Lets hope that an obsession with making things ‘natural’ doesn’t add to that.

(And just in case anyone is tempted to get overly sentimental about a TV personality leading a housing development, McCloud’s Hab Housing is partnered by Footstep Homes, a joint venture company backed by some fairly unabashed capitalists.)

It may not have been demolished yet, but Westlecott Farm is now surrounded by development work. Further east, with only a few months to go before the first houses in East Wichel are meant to be ready, there’s no sign of even foundations being laid yet.

How nice it is to see a good old fashioned claim-and-counter-claim argument between the developers of Swindon’s front garden on the one hand and the protesters on the other. From the developers there’s a new report from their consultants that’s being presented with an everything’s fine, don’t worry mate tone (though as the report’s not yet available to the public there’s no way of knowing if this is an accurate interpretation).

Research suggests the worst flooding for 1,000 years could see flood levels reach 39.5cm, but Taylor Wimpey said an extra 20cm safety margin had been included to make sure water does not enter houses, even taking unpredictable climate change into account. Wichelstowe project director David Evans said: “We were always confident that Wichelstowe had been designed to provide a robust protection against flooding and hope the result of this latest study will allay any concerns local people may have had about new homes being flooded in the future.”

From the protesters there’s a repeat of their it were all underwater, gov claim.

Frag chairman Terry King said his trip to the Front Garden site during the July floods proved otherwise. “I went down there and saw lakes where houses are to be built and roads already have been under half a metre of water, so I just don’t believe them…. To start with the developers said there was no risk of flooding. Then they decided to raise the ground, so they have already gone back on their word. I would be interested to see whether, when the houses have been built, owners will be able to insure them.”

As I’ve previously noted, I don’t believe either grouping. Like Mr King, I also went for a walk around after the heavy rain in July and the evidence I saw lies somewhere between the claims of the two sides: the houses may well be dry, but I very much doubt that the access roads will be.

It’s so comforting to read of the reasons that a group of campaigners from Wootton Bassett are opposing the plan for the western end of the southern relief road around the developments on the Swindon front garden to be near Wootton Bassett and their homes.

Lady Inchcape and campaigners against the junction fear the changes would create more traffic on local routes and congest Old Town.

So magnanimous. Concerned for the people of Swindon rather than themselves…. Except that it is a bit like suggesting that moving the western end of the M4 from Pont Abraham to Aust would lead to greater congestion in central London. It just wouldn’t be right to allow some logic to get in the way of an old fashioned nimby campaign.

Whilst I may have concerns about the developments on the Front Garden (not least the possible need for occupants to travel by boat rather than car), for the Swindon Front Garden Action Group to claim that there was

between 1ft and 1.5ft of water covering many areas where houses are set to be built and where roads into the site have already been created.

is only half true. Some of the main roads on the site were flooded. The areas where the houses will be built were not. Even just a quick look at the plans shows that all the housing, retail and industrial developments are on higher land. As the man from the developers said

All residential development on Wichelstowe will be outside the predicted flood plain and will be built with ground floors at least 600mm above the predicted worst case flood level to give an added degree of certainty that it will not suffer in times of flood.

However, he wouldn’t be a developer if he could resist the urge to indulge in a little spinning.

Similarly all of the distributor roads serving the residential areas are designed to be above the flood level so that the communities are not cut off.

I guess the road I photographed must be serving something other than residential areas… a water park, perhaps?

I’m not sure whether the developers of Swindon’s front garden are intending to offer dinghies with their houses, but perhaps they should. In the plans, most of the area in the first photograph below is going to be a lake. The other photographs show what, in the plans, will be the main river access road to West Wichel.

The lake

The main access road

Thamesdown Transport has published changes* to its timetables. Noticeable amongst the changes are the re-routing of service 15 away from St Andrews Ridge to serve the newer developments of Priory Vale (replacing the developer-supported service 18 which will be much reduced) and the first developments in the Front Garden, where again there is developer support*. The reason for withdrawing a frequent (every 15 minutes) service from St Andrews Ridge and replacing it with an hourly one? Low usage. I wonder where service 15 will go next, once the next set of developer subsidies have run out.

* Links are to pdf documents.

Walking along the old railway line from Mannington to Old Town today, I see that preparatory work for the front garden development has now almost reached South Leaze, so the whole length of the site is now being worked on. Most noticeable was the absence of Blackhorse Bridge, demolished early last month. Elsewhere, the main activities seem to be building temporary roads and putting in drainage. We wouldn’t want the occupants of the new houses to get wet feet now, would we?

Blackhorse Bridge in May and… the site of Blackhorse Bridge in July.

Seems that the might of the developers has been temporarily thwarted given a sideways nudge. Finches and swallows have been found (well, actually more a case of actively sought) nesting in Westlecott Farm (the white building and outbuildings in my earlier photographs). As a consequence the farm cannot be demolished until late August. The joy of the campaigners does seem somewhat sulky though, and their hopes unrealistic.

I’m a realist so understand that the development will go ahead, but all the setbacks might mean that they reconsider the size of it.

Delaying the demolition of one farm is but a minor blip in the path of a 4,500 house development.

Only a little over a month since I last passed this way, and a tarmacked road now cuts across half of the Swindon front garden. No sign of new bricks on mortar yet though.