You’d think that, with the housing market in the doldrums, the likes of Persimmon Homes would have betterthingstodo with their money than going lodging planning appeals at almost the first opportunity. If a council fails to make a decision within a set time (‘non-determination’ in planning jargon) the planning laws allow six months to appeal. Persimmon have waited just one month to lodge an appeal against Swindon Borough Council’s failure to make a decision on their plans to surround Coate Water with concrete.
Just how many developments in a single town does one developer need in a falling market?
A CONTROVERSIAL plan to build thousands of homes on Swindon’s Front Garden has been shelved due to the tough economic times. The announcement came after Swindon Council admitted its hopes to pick a developer to build 4,500 homes in Wichelstowe from a list of four companies, chosen earlier this year, will not go ahead this summer as they had hoped. However, plans to build some 200 low-cost homes on the 460-acre site will go ahead as planned.
But as the comments from councillors within the Adver’s own report indicate, that is overstating things: the plans have been delayed, not shelved, yet. There’s also something missing from the report: the selection of developers that the council has deferred is for the Middle Wichel and West Wichel developments only. Most of East Wichel is already owned by Taylor Wimpey. Development may have slowed, but with land already sold to a developer, it’s unlikely to stop for long.
Whilst researching my last posting, I noticed that the forthcoming cabinet meeting of Swindon Borough Council has as the final item on its agenda ‘University at North Star, Swindon’ including site plans. It will be discussed behind closed doors.
The Town Centre systems that exist are not currently monitored 24/7. The effect of this is that there is no pro-active CCTV cover at peak times. Similarly, if a major incident occurred in the Town Centre, coordination of the existing systems to monitor the incident and response is likely to be difficult.
Hmm… and permanently monitored CCTV would solve that? To quote another part of the same report,
Government’s national CCTV strategy identifies that an estimated 80% of data from CCTV is of questionable quality.
So the report is recommending investing in a central control room, to monitor at all hours CCTV footage that is acknowledged to be of questionable value. It makes as much sense as hiring a conductor for an orchestra where all the instruments are out of tune. It’ll look impressive and coordinated, but the overall result will be barely distinguishable from the chaos that went before.
It’s received plenty of presscoverage, but there’s an ingredient missing from the Development Agreement announced on Wednesday amidst a flurry of pressreleases. Dates. Modus Properties may well have committed to spending £215M on the Regent Place development but, without an indication of when that might be — and Mr Bluh was at pains to say that it wouldn’t be soon — it all looks like a rather empty publicity stunt.
I’m a little puzzled about what the significance of Swindon Borough Council’s StreetSmart initiative really is. The puff for it in the Adver gives the impression of a great coming together of services: parts of two departments merged into one.
Until now, the services grouped under the StreetSmart banner operated separately in two council directorates – transport and environment and leisure.
As far as I can tell, they still do. What’s changed, according to the StreetSmart page on the council’s website, are the arrangements for contacting some of them.
StreetSmart brings together, under the StreetSmart team at the Swindon Direct Contact Centre, all the services which keep the Borough’s streets and open spaces looking tidy and well tended. It also provides just one point of contact for those services
So that’s a bit more co-ordination of the teams, a lot of rebranding — addresses and titles of pages on the website renamed to include the new brand and a main page with a pretty little logo at the bottom and a not-so-pretty logo at the top — but still two separate departments. And if it’s taken this initiative to provide a single contact number for these services, just what has Swindon Direct been doing since its creation earlier this year?
Swindon Direct was meant to provide a single point for council services. It was already the one number you could call about all the services now covered by StreetSmart. And the ‘new’ number for StreetSmart has been in use since Swindon Direct was created, but as the direct dial number just for waste & recycling. If your problem is with car park maintenance, do you now call the StreetSmart number or the Car Parking number of Swindon Direct?
It seems the council has already recreated the problem that Swindon Direct was meant to solve.
From the title alone, those with an interest in such things will realise that this is a post about re-desecration regeneration of Swindon. Yet another development has been described using the developers’ favourite term “vibrant”. This time it’s the few remaining open spaces within the former railway works that’s now, apparently, renamed “Churchward Village”. Thomas Homes are redeveloping the area occupied by the railway works traverser, which has been labelled “Smith’s Quarter”. In their own words,
Thomas Homes is bringing new life to the former locomotive works of the Great Western Railway as part of an extensive regeneration project to include an urban residential development of apartments and houses, leisure facilities, restaurants, hotel accommodation and office suites which will provide a vibrant community in the heart of Swindon.
I’m not sure what a “vibrant community” is. According to my dictionary, “vibrant” means “vibrating, thrilling with (action, etc.); resonant.” A vibrating community sounds to me like one in need of medical attention. Perhaps they’ll be shaking after a visit to the “vibrant” redeveloped town centre… though somehow I doubt it. A big television and a shopping centre with new canopies are hardly likely to have them overcome with emotion.
It’s also difficult to see just what in this new development is going to contribute to the vitality of the town. It’s just more flats, 245 of them. With flats leading the fall in property prices they’re unlikely to be “integral to the regeneration of Swindon” as the developer’s consultants claim. Mr Brotherton of Thomas Homes makes some equally unrealistic claims.
Churchward Village is a superb development in a great location surrounded by listed buildings. It is also something completely different for Swindon, bringing character close to the town centre… it’s bringing something new to Swindon.
Let’s hope Mr Bretherton has a better grasp of construction and economics than he does of design and novelty. Yet more flats, and fairly bland looking flats at that, will neither be something new nor bring character to Swindon.
In all the fuss over the proposal for a new ‘GP led health centre’ in central Swindon, there’s one argument that I find rather empty, and that’s whether the centre might or should be run by a ‘private provider’. Today’s letter to the Adver from the Whalebridge Practice has raised the point again.
We have reservations about the planned introduction of so-called polyclinics and private providers and question if such ventures are wanted, needed or provide an effective use of valuable resources.
What seems to be forgotten is that the existing GP practices are not as public-sector as some might think. The GPs run their own practices under contract to the NHS: they are not employees of the NHS in the way that a nurse is. I wonder whether what is concerning the GPs more, as has often concerned them during the sixty years of the NHS, is the threat to their independence that these centres might pose. Although branded as ‘GP led’, with some of the commercial organisations that have expressed an interest, it is clear that they may not be ‘GP controlled’.
’Tis amazing how easy it is to miss an event happening almost on your doorstep. This morning I heard a siren coming from the direction of Wootton Bassett Road and thought that it was going on for rather a long time without fading into the distance as they usually do. A few minutes later I heard another siren and thought the same. An hour and a half later whilst walking to work I noticed immediately that Westcott Place was heavily congested despite the school holidays having started and that traffic was also tailing back heading north along Park Lane. I assumed this was the cause of an accident on Great Western Way, as that is the usual cause of abnormal traffic congestion in this area. In fact it was far closer to home.
One thing struck me in the comments on the Adverreport of the loft fire in a house on Wootton Bassett Road was a comment from someone claiming to be a fireman.
Every house fire requires the attendance of our aerial appliance
It never used to be that way and I’d be interested to know when and why the use of a conventional fire tender, water hose and ladder ceased to be acceptable. As the Adver’s photograph shows, although the ‘aerial applicance’ was in attendance, its aerial capabilities weren’t getting much use.
