Thursday, September 26, 2013

Airfield plan should be shot down in flames



YET again on a planning issue, we have to ask despairingly: “Why do we bother to care?”

Old Sarum airfield, beset by would-be developers, was once memorably described by Winterslow’s councillor Chris Devine as “like a wagon train being encircled by Red Indians”.

He was right, and they’re brandishing their tomahawks again.

Back in 2010 when sites for new housing in South Wiltshire were being designated under the Core Strategy, a surprise, last-minute proposal for development at the southern end of the airfield was put forward by its owners, without public consultation.

Wiltshire Council officers had identified enough sites already, and they said so to the government inspector in charge of the process.

But he had other ideas, going so far as to suggest that the runway could be realigned to ease the way for builders.

The airfield is a conservation area. Three of its hangars are listed buildings. English Heritage calls it “the best preserved flying field of the First World War” – in other words, not a collection of unrelated buildings but a complete entity, and a national treasure.

Dismayed local councillors tried to get the scheme dropped at a City Hall meeting, but were told they couldn’t tinker with the Strategy without it becoming null and void.

They had to accept the whole package or risk a development free-for-all. Those were the rules.

Still, so strong was the opposition, led by councillor Ian McLennan, that Wiltshire boss Jane Scott stepped in.

To sighs of relief all round, she suggested getting the runway listed to protect it, saying there was “more than one way to skin a cat”.

No sooner was the meeting over than her idea was shot down by planners, who told her land can’t be listed. But by then the rest of us had gone away with the impression that something was being done.

Now residents have been invited to a ‘public consultation’ by the airfield’s operators, who claim they need the profits from new homes on its perimeter to manage the conservation area and put up a visitor centre, which Wiltshire policy currently requires.

For how long do you imagine the buyers of these homes will put up with the noise of flying, literally on their doorstep?

And if flying is restricted as a result, how long before our historic airfield is closed down as uneconomic?

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Wiltshire Council and the spider in the bath



THAT’S it, I said to my absent husband on the phone.  Proof that it’s autumn. There’s a giant spider in the bath.
When we first bought our house the previous occupants had thoughtfully covered it with a kind of Russian vine.
To call it an invasive plant would be an understatement.  A rampaging monster, it was constantly having to be cut back from all the front windows to avoid a blackout.
As soon as we chopped it back it seemed to put on a growth spurt. And it brought with it a wealth of insect life. It was the spider that brought it to mind. At this time of year in particular we used to be haunted by them.
They would scurry out from underneath one armchair and dive under the next, to hide. My husband, keenly interested in wildlife even at the most inopportune moments, said he thought they were wolf spiders. Then, upon reflection, he decided they were giant house spiders. I said I didn’t care what they were, with legs that huge they’d have to be caught and put outside.  It was them or me, and I couldn’t sit with my feet up off the floor all night.
“They’ll only come straight back in again,” he would say, reasonably. But I was beyond being reasoned with.
Grasshoppers used to climb up where the vine snaked through the sash windows in the boys’ bedrooms and perch on the ceilings, bemused at suddenly finding themselves in a blank, white, alien environment with no idea how to get out again, so they had to be removed, too.
What with the added peril of the annual wasps’ nests in the attic – I came to dread that dozy time of year when I’d find them crawling across my young sons’ bedclothes – it was all a bit much.
The day my husband finally decided to tackle the vine some 20 years ago was one I will never forget. I know it’s a cliché, but it really was like Jack and the Beanstalk. Its fallen remains filled the front garden twice over.
Now we still get enormous spiders, but mostly they only pop up through the plughole, and since they can’t climb the sides of the bath, if I’m on my own and I’m not feeling up to trying to catch them in a jug, I can always just have a shower instead.

Speaking of fairy tales, as I was in passing, there will certainly be a happy ending to 2013 for the top brass at Wiltshire Council who are to enjoy pay rises of up to £19,000. That’s more than many people in Salisbury earn in a year, as a quick glance at Journal Jobs will show.
Apparently the council fears it won’t be able to attract and keep executives of the right calibre because its current rates are “adrift of the market”.
I’d have thought there’d be plenty of competent candidates prepared to settle for six-figure sums and comfy public sector pensions in the current economic climate. But maybe it’s a different world up there.
Or maybe Wiltshire’s problems have as much to do with morale as with money.  Certainly among the lower orders, who can only look on enviously at their bosses while they are stuck with a below-inflation ‘rise’ of just 1 per cent.
Does leader Jane Scott know that they have their own version of the ‘Where everybody matters’ motto?
It’s ‘Where everybody mutters’.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

The Alice in Wonderland world of law and order


A FRIEND has given me a garden ornament – it’s an owl with solar-powered light-up eyes.
I was relaxing in the garden one lovely warm evening last week, chatting to my husband, when I had a sudden feeling of being watched.
I turned, and found two pairs of eyes gazing unblinking at me from a flower bed.
One pair, of course, belonged to the owl, which had switched itself on as the sun sank. The other belonged to my dog, who was crouched, motionless, alongside the bird, peeping over the petals, his eyebrows raised as he willed me to notice him and throw him a ball.
They made a surreal picture, and we laughed. It’s like a scene from Alice in Wonderland, I said.


So what have my dog and Wiltshire Police’s plans for Salisbury got in common? They’re both barking, for a start.
I’d been regaling my husband that evening with tales I’ve been told about events at the increasingly crowded Melksham police station as more and more staff and functions have been transferred there from Salisbury - including the trial preparation unit, which has made it difficult to maintain day-to-day contact with the officers involved in some cases.
Apparently there have been power cuts, most people have to eat and drink at their desks because the canteen can’t seat them all, and the sewage system recently overflowed, flooding an upper floor and causing a ceiling to collapse – “not a pretty sight”, I am told.
Plus there isn’t enough parking space to cope with the influx. As a result, people are parking on the surrounding roads. So Wiltshire Council proposes to paint double yellow lines to stop them. Now that last element does sound all too believable.
Of course, as I said to my husband, my informants could be making it all up. But it’s so bizarre, so Alice in Wonderland, that I don’t think they are.
Meanwhile I’ve heard that the former Imrys Quarry on Wilton Road is the favoured site for new police facilities. Not a bad spot, I suppose, as long as any new buildings are completed before the force is turfed out of its current home.
Unfortunately, I’ve also heard that this site would be shared with Wiltshire Council, which raises questions about how the privacy of users such as victims of domestic violence or witnesses to crimes could be protected.
 A week or two back there was even a rumour that a vacant factory at High Post might be adapted for police use by having its roof taken off and a prefabricated custody unit lowered in. Was that just a joke, or a sign of desperation?
If it was true, what would happen when people were let out of the cells? Would they have to walk all the way back into town along the pavement-free A345? I suppose they could always hop on to a park and ride bus at the Beehive. That would be one way to boost passenger numbers.