Tag: Swindon

Now both the main parties are at it. Just a few days after the red nest brought in yet another minister to meet and greet in the town, now the blue nest have brought in a shadow minister, again to meet and greet, in Parks ward where most of the ministerial visitors have spent most of their visits.

Perhaps I’m old fashioned but, when deciding which candidate to vote for in the council elections, I couldn’t care less what ministers and their shadows have to say. This is a local election, not a national one, and, for once, there are quite a few local issues to be debated, such as waste and recycling services, town centre regeneration, and the canal proposals.

It seems that the parties are so busy showing their parliamentary colleagues around Parks ward that so far they’ve had little time to enter the local debate on the doorstep in the rest of the borough. If parties concentrate campaigning effort on ‘key’ marginal wards and take the elctorate elsewhere for granted, they shouldn’t be surprised if the result is voter apathy.

You’d think that if a developer wanting to replace a landmark property, such as Swindon’s tented market, had their previous proposal rejected because it had too many restaurants in then, on their next attempt, they’d try something with less. You’d also think that if that same previous proposal was rejected because it

fails to achieve a high standard of urban design, is unsympathetic to the local context by reason of its appearance and would fail to improve the character of the Town Centre.

then, on their next attempt, they’d come back with a better, more impressive design.

It seems that the people at Clarebrook Limited don’t think that way. Their latest proposal has exactly the same balance of units as their last (three restaurants or cafes plus only one shop), and a design that is certainly striking, but in all the wrong ways. The previous design was bland. The new design is ugly. Very ugly. Anyone passing in Commercial Road would see a building that looks as though their architects got confused and stuck halves of two different buildings together. That they still call this a ‘pavilion’ shows an understanding of the English language that is as poor as their design. Messrs Pennington Robson describe themselves as ‘interior architects and designers’, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the exterior of their design is so abysmal.

And remember, when was the last time you saw an artist’s impression of a development that lived up to the artwork in real life? If it looks bad in the plans, it’ll look much, much worse in reality.

The BBC Big Screen Swindon in Wharf Green has now been switched on, with workmen busily filling in the remaining gaps in the paving. This must now be one of the most inappropriately named places in Swindon, being named after a wharf that disappeared almost a hundred years ago, and now bereft of almost all greenery. As for the screen itself, the newly planted row of trees (to make up for some of those cut down last year) help obscure it from Canal Walk. Having now seen the screen working, I remain of the opinion that it will not live up to the hype. It’s a welcome addition to the town centre, but nothing stunning.

Two news stories, that the prime site occupied by Mecca bingo is likely to be vacant for an extended period and that Swindon now has Britain’s biggest charity shop, both suggest that the fortunes of Swindon town centre are currently on the way down, not up. Except for in the very centre of the town, there are many other vacant shops too.

Any regeneration plan will go through a period where it makes the local economy worse not better, but that is usually at the height of the reconstruction work. This slide is before redevelopment has really started. Just as a patient needs to be of reasonable strength (even if in poor health) before a surgeon will operate, so a town centre needs to have a certain level of vitality if it is to withstand a major redevelopment.

The planners need to be mindful of the condition of their patient, rather than being too enthralled with grand plans.

It’s not just the recent weather that has been unseasonal. The run-up to this year’s local elections has also been unusually quiet. But at least we have the list of candidates now (and despite having ‘2004’ in the link it is for this year). It looks a little more local than usual, with three of the Central ward candidates living in the ward itself: Kevin Leakey, David Cox and Eric Bagwell. The other two are a little more remote: Hannah Pajak from Old Town and Junab Ali from Freshbrook. Apart from that all we have to judge the candidates on are a couple of manifestos, from the blue and red nests. The blue nest are long on what they have done, but short on what they will do in the future. The red nest accuse the blues of wasting money on a canal… only to suggest spending on investigating whether trams should be introduced into Swindon. Now that’s far more likely to cause ‘traffic chaos’ than a canal down one road ever will.

I found myself oddly disappointed by a lunchtime visit to the Pagoda Palace restaurant this week. It’s not that there was anything wrong with the meal: there wasn’t. The food was good, in the English Chinese-restaurant style. The deep-fried cuttlefish dumplings for starter were exquisitely formed and the main course of chicken with black bean sauce and green pepper was tasty, as were the plain-fried noodles with beansprouts that I chose to accompany it. Other dishes sampled were of equal quality, though in the seafood dishes flavoured with ‘salt and chilli’ the former is rather too prominent. The venue is great, with a fine location overlooking a lake. Indeed, at an average of £18 for two courses, in comparison with other restaurants in Swindon at lunchtime, at least some of that price would appear to be for the location rather than the food. With the same price in the evening it’s distinctly good value. The service was good too, although the repeated enquiry ‘Would you like anything more to drink?’ was more that a little irksome by its fourth repeat. What let the place down though was that, of the twelve items that the group I was with ordered, three were either not available or, in the case of duck, only available if we were prepared to wait ‘one or two hours’.

The Palace is a large restaurant, seating up to three hundred people, and their menu is long. At lunchtimes, when the number of customers is small (there were only three groups there when we visited, amounting to less than twenty people in total) they should perhaps offer a smaller menu, so that what they offer matches more closely what they can deliver.

The flow of ministers to prop-up the local red nest’s election campaign continues. This time ’tis Mr Dhanda who, like his Swindon colleagues, is a committed hypocrite, campaigning against his own party’s post office closures. He’s also a practitioner of the red nest habit of making glib claims of their achievements, when all the facts show the opposite.

Tackling problem behaviour is something the Labour Government is committed to. We are on the side of hard-working families and that is something clearly visible here in Swindon.

Releasing convicted criminals early after only half their sentence, as introduced by the red nest government’s early release scheme, is an odd approach to ‘tackling problem behaviour’. And in case Mr Dhanda hasn’t noticed, one thing the Broadgreen area is lacking is families (hard-working or not), having the highest density of houses in multiple occupation (i.e. bedsits) in Swindon. The hard-working single people that frequently occupy those bedsits are neglected by politicians of all colours.

I see that Mr Cartwright from the Wilts and Berks Canal Trust is, once again, demonstrating his contempt for the people of Swindon, brushing aside any concerns that are expressed. In response to an Adver survey showing over 63% of a sample of 1000 people were against the proposals to reintroduce a canal to central Swindon, Mr Cartwright takes the ‘glass one third full’ approach.

It still means that a third of people support it. A lot of people’s response is probably because there has been a lot of negativity in the newspapers about the canal. Then when you ask people a yes or no question like this they immediately think of all the negative aspects – it’ll cause traffic problems, it’ll cost me lots of money. I think we need to get across to people that the canal will not cost them anything and that the traffic problems in the centre have to be solved with or without the canal.

His “it won’t cost a thing” argument is getting monotonous now. It may not appear in the council tax, but ultimately, whether it be by companies re-developing central Swindon passing a levy onto the people, or central government taxation, we will end up paying the £52M that the canal will cost. Let’s also not forget that the £52M price tag does not include the costs of buying land nor of works to relieve traffic congestion resulting from the canal.

Speaking of which, Mr Cartwright’s comments about traffic congestion suggest that he has not read the report that his own organisation and Swindon Borough Council commissioned.

To conclude; this initial modelling work indicates that closing Westcott Place and Faringdon Road to general traffic would have some negative traffic impacts, including increases in traffic delay, increased journey lengths (due to detours), and possibly the loss of some on-street parking. However, the modelling shows that other areas of the network will experience reductions in traffic/congestion, and hence, overall the network would not reach capacity and therefore could accommodate the closure of Westcott Place and Faringdon Road. However, other potential future year changes may also add to congestion in the Borough, which may result in unacceptable delays.

That’s not the benign outcome that Mr Cartwright is trying to portray, but a statement that building a canal will bring forward the time when Swindon’s streets reach gridlock.

If Mr Cartwright wishes to gain the support of the people of Swindon for his plans, he needs to address their concerns, not dismiss them.

The latest in a string of red nest ministers to fly into Swindon to prop-up their Swindon colleagues ahead of the May local elections, Ms Flint has not made quite the impact on the Adver that she might have wished.

HOUSING Minister Caroline Fleet made a flying visit to Swindon during a tour of the south west to talk about affordable housing.

Caroline Who? The mistake is repeated twice more in the story: only the photograph caption has her correct name.

Ms Flint’s own comments about Swindon Borough Council are hardly faultless either.

The current administration has failed to meet its own housing targets

Aah… smell the hypocrisy. According to her ministerial biography, until January,

Her ministerial responsibilities included the labour market, welfare to work and child poverty.

Clearly, Ms Flint is someone very familiar with missed targets.

Whilst others may be concerned about the disappearance of a cinema from one of the town centre redevelopments, there are other, smaller things that developers would like to remove elsewhere. It seems, if the supporting documents to their planning application are to be believed, that the Outlet Centre has previously been given planning permission for more shop space than their buildings can actually contain. Their proposal to get round this (as opposed to replacing some of the office and other non-retail space) is to remove — or as they put it relocate — the children’s play area.

Erection of a glazed enclosure and removal of existing canopies to provide additional retail area and relocation of the play area.

If you’ve got a spare half hour or so, have a look at their plans, in particular the ones labelled ‘Plan-Play Area Relocation’ and see if you can find where the play area has been relocated to. It is noticeably absent. The drawings do show an anonymous red rectangle on the east side of the centre that might be it, but there is nothing saying so. If it is, then it’s a small fraction of the size of the existing play area.

As an aside, I hope the Outlet Centre’s designers’ ability at building design is much better than their website design, where one has to chase a floating circle around the screen in order to navigate the site. There is an important balance that should be maintained between creativity and practicality. Sadly, it’s one that some architects and designers seem never to learn.