Bloody-minded Salisbury? Or simply thinking for ourselves?

CALL me cynical, but sometimes I suspect that our local politicians plan their contributions to meetings with headlines in mind.

There was a classic at the online (on-and-off line might be a better description due to various technical malfunctions) meeting of Wiltshire’s strategic planning committee on Wednesday.

“The fundamental bloody-mindedness of Salisbury” was what planners needed to reckon on, according to Cllr Fred Westmoreland.

“If you try to change something you had better have a pretty good argument.”

Well, one person’s bloody-mindedness is another’s independence of thought, I say. But he had a point.

Which was that the latest vision for revitalising our city, known as the Central Area Framework, would end in tears unless residents were on board.

For example, there have long been aspirations by successive local authorities to redevelop the Brown Street and Salt Lane car parks, and they haven’t gone away.

People who live nearby have no option but to use these for evening parking, Cllr Westmoreland pointed out.

Major projects team leader David Milton reassured him that no car parks would be built on unless the community were happy with alternative parking arrangements.

Cllr Stewart Dobson pointed out that market towns such as ours rely on people coming in from outlying villages, and they in turn rely on their cars.

They can’t be expected to cycle for miles, and won’t always find it convenient to hang around for a park and ride bus.

“Planners don’t seem to realise that personal transport isn’t going to die,” he declared. “It will change to be electric, which will solve air pollution. But there’s nothing in this document to do with encouraging charging points.

“It’s a thing of the moment to say that market towns ought to go pedestrian. But we are going to seriously affect the retail businesses that rely on people being able to easily get in.”

Transport was actually the only element of this well-researched and generally well-received exercise that provoked any real debate.

And understandably it added to some members’ worries about the separate issue of the experimental ban on through traffic, or People Friendly Streets scheme, which is about to hit us.

Cllr Andrew Davis asked how this would affect tradespeople trying to work on, or deliver to, homes in the city centre.

No answer.

Cllr Brian Dalton asked if the scheme’s introduction could be delayed slightly. Given the closure of the A338 for three weeks, at the same time as the return to school, he foresaw “a perfect storm of chocked traffic”.

And who could disagree?

But it wasn’t strictly the committee’s province. So we’ll just have to wait and see how it pans out.

 

 

 

 

 

Voice of business is the voice of common sense

 ANOTHER day, another business warning that the plans to make Salisbury more pedestrian and cycle friendly will cost them a fortune.

This time it's the Cathedral View B&B in Exeter Street, where residents' parking will make way for a cycle lane. The proprietor reckons it will lose him 50% of his takings.

Who drew up these plans? Was it in Salisbury or Trowbridge? I find it really hard to imagine it can have been anyone familiar with what's where in Salisbury. The principle of making our city greener is great. The practicalities just haven't been thought through well enough.

It's not difficult to work out that B&Bs catering to our vital tourist industry need parking space. Any more than it was to realise that a launderette needs a drop-off point, or a sick animal might need to be transported to the vet in a vehicle. I pointed these things out weeks ago.

Now even the cycling pressure group COGS, which is generally over the moon about the People Friendly Streets trial, is saying on Twitter that it didn't call for this particular cycle lane. I should hope not. The street is clogged up enough as it is, without losing a few feet of carriageway to anyone brave enough to risk it on two wheels.

"Gosh," says COGS, "we really hope you don't lose 50% of your business - that would not be acceptable." It goes on to ask how COGS, the city council and the BID can help "further promote" the B&B. 

I should have thought it was obvious. Don't prevent guests from parking.

To add insult to injury, I'm hearing that not one resident of Exeter Street has been officially notified yet about this scheme.

I honestly don't see why people can't cycle on the very wide pavement there instead. Obviously they'd have to go carefully, especially at school opening and closing times, but it wouldn't be impossible. I know, because I've done it! Sorry, officer! But it seemed the safest bet at the time.

The death of one local business will be one too many

HUSBANDS do have their uses, and this week mine made a valuable contribution to my inner debate about how to unclog Salisbury’s roads.

“You can’t predict the traffic patterns of the future based on what’s happened in the past,” he pointed out, “because after this pandemic people will be working from home more. We hope.”

Well, I had got so bogged down in my timeworn thought patterns that I hadn’t considered that.

There will undoubtedly be a change in behaviour. Whether it’ll be widespread enough to have a significant impact on our ring road jams and polluted air we’ll have to wait and see.

But it does offer a ray of hope that won’t actually cost millions.

In the meantime, I’ve heard it suggested that we should plough ahead with the experimental ban on through traffic in the city centre even though it will increase congestion on the ring road, because officialdom will only do something to help us when the A36 becomes impassable. And we’re not there yet.

It won’t be long, though. Factor in the expected explosion in Harnham traffic - cars and vans serving three new housing estates and lorries thundering through to Southampton’s expanding port facilities - and we really won’t know which way to turn.

Which is precisely the point, I’ve been told. We residents might give up trying to get through the gyratory if we find ourselves going nowhere on the other side, with no option of rat-running through town. We might walk, or cycle, instead.

Bypasses are out of the question, apparently, unless they bring what are known as ‘economic benefits’, i.e. more housing – in which case of course they’re not bypasses at all but outer ring roads surrounded by yet more mass-produced estates that draw yet more traffic. In other words, the solution becomes an extension of the problem.

This trial ban on most traffic in central Salisbury is just that – a trial -  I’m told, and one that could be stopped at any time if the public get too fed up.

But I've read about how it will affect the folk running the Washing Well in Chipper Lane, a very handy launderette when you’ve got bulky things to clean and you need to drop them off at the door, and I’m just glad the decision to kill off a small local business won't be my responsibility.

Since this post was written, Chipper Lane has been removed from the scheme, along with Endless Street. This makes a lot of sense, and I'm glad the powers-that-be have listened to the public on this one. I can now say I wish the trial scheme well.

Yet more legal action over Old Sarum airfield

THE operators of Old Sarum Airfield are aggrieved. Again.

Having failed to persuade a government inspector and a High Court judge with arguments in favour of their development plans, they’re issuing a writ against Wiltshire Council alleging breach of contract.

The council, or at any rate its Salisbury District predecessor, flirted with them and led them on, they complain, and now they’ve been let down.

They keep talking about an agreement that was made with the district authority to reduce the number of flights and the associated noise in return for permission to build a ‘mixed use’ scheme involving a flying hub and new homes.

How far did this process of negotiation actually go? Is there anything on paper?

Considering how much money they reckon they've lost in recent years, the airfield operators, who spent £5million preparing their doomed planning application, still seem to have plenty available to splash out on lawyers.

They are also pursuing a damages claim against Phoenix Life, alleging that as the freeholder of a building that was used by Equinox International, it was responsible for damage to the Grade 2* listed Hangar Three, which they blame on vibrations from Equinox’s steel cutting equipment.

Equinox has been gone for about four years now, and bits have continued to fall off the hangar ever since. There’s been plenty of time to start restoring it.

But I'm told the hangar has changed hands in the meantime, apparently to a company based in the Bahamas.

Having been up there very recently and taken a look, it’s my architecturally unqualified view that the building is unlikely to survive another stormy winter while legal actions drag on and on.

And once it’s gone, of course, we’ll have lost a key element of what makes the airfield worth preserving as a historic conservation area.

It is way past time for the authorities to act.

While all this is wending its weary way through the system, Old Sarum Airfield says it’s going to bring back flying to recoup some of its losses. Aircraft at an airfield – who'd have thought it! I do hope it happens.

But will the pilots they ejected be eager to return?

Take the through traffic away! It's not rocket science

“I’M talking to my tomatoes,” said my husband, as he prepared breakfast in the lovely tree house where we were spending the weekend.

That’ll teach me not to interrupt his concentration. Classic “men can’t multitask” territory!

And to be fair, he had brought the tomatoes with us from our greenhouse, where he’s been tending them for several weeks now.

Anyway, the trip to the glorious countryside of Herefordshire, a first for me, was much needed for reasons I won’t bore you with. It does us all good to get away from home sometimes, to see our preoccupations from a new perspective.

We’re back to find the debate over city centre ‘sort of’ pedestrianisation more polarised than ever, with nine city councillors signing up in support, as opposed to seven against.

Seeking to reassure the ‘anti’ brigade, Wiltshire’s cabinet member for transport, Bridget Wayman, says Highways England is “working closely with us to monitor traffic flows on the A36, and we are also developing a contingency plan should there be a need to use it”.

I think we need to know what that plan is, and how much chaos there will have to be before it’s brought into effect, if her words are to inspire us with confidence.

But I’m delighted to hear that Highways England is about to “conduct a major review to consider the need for investment in the strategic road network through Wiltshire, between the M4 and the south coast”.

It’s long overdue. How much ‘reviewing’ do they need to do before they accept the case for taking through traffic away from our ring road? Hasn’t it been obvious for decades now?

Or is this just another way of kicking a problem into the long grass because there’ll be ‘no money’?

And why would we trust them anyway, because their plans for Netherhampton Road and the Harnham Gyratory are all about making life easier for through traffic, including long-bodied lorries?

If you don’t believe me, click on this link and skip to Page 46:

https://westerngatewaystb.org.uk/media/2090918/wg-reb-part-3-mrn-llm-priorities.pdf

It doesn’t appear to consider Harnham part of the “historic city with an air pollution problem caused by traffic”.

Apparently the A338 from College Roundabout to Harnham Gyratory “forms part of a tactical diversionary route for the A36”.

I tell you, they just don’t get it. Wherever you divert through traffic in Salisbury, it’s still through traffic in Salisbury.

Take it away.

 

 

Adding insult to housebuilding injury in Harnham

I AM so angry I could scream.

It’s bad enough having the massive new Bovis Homes estate next to the cattle market foisted on those of us who live in Harnham, Netherhampton and Quidhampton, with the extra traffic congestion that will ensue from 640 homes (and don’t forget, there’ll be more to come on the other side of Netherhampton Road and at the old business park).

But do we really have to swallow the PR guff issued to the Salisbury Journal by the builder’s senior strategic development manager Robert Winstone as well?

Insult is piled on injury when Mr Winstone boasts that the development will “help improve the community” with “investment in schools, health, transport and the environment”.

Wow, it’ll include “open space and play areas” where once there was good-quality agricultural land and a green entrance to the city!

It’ll provide a new primary school - on the wrong side of Harnham from where everyone agrees that one is actually needed.

I don’t believe for a minute that parents on their way to work from East Harnham, or indeed from elsewhere in the city, will walk or cycle with their children all that way to that school.

Of course not, they’ll drive, adding to the pollution and congestion that already blight Netherhampton Road every rush hour (Covid lockdown excepted, of course).

Bovis will invest £13million on, among other things, “local air quality projects”. It’ll darned well need to!

The only moderately good thing about this whole debacle will be that 40 per cent of the new housing will be “affordable”.

But what an environmental price we will all have to pay for that “affordability”.

However, let’s look on the bright side. The company’s new range of homes is named after trees. Not just any old trees, but good old British trees! That’ll make them feel all soft-focus nature-friendly, won’t it?

And the designs will “focus on bringing the outside in” – not including any fumes, I hope – maximising space and light with – ooh, wait for it - bifold doors. So that's all right, then.

 

Well done to traffic scheme rebels

I’M very glad to see that seven city councillors and the Chamber of Commerce president have called on Wiltshire to think again about its plans to pedestrianise parts of the city centre.

Well done for standing up to the unitary authority over the undemocratic way they’re imposing this trial scheme at short notice just because there’s government money available.

The misgivings of the Magnificent Seven (plus one - sorry, Andy Rhind-Tutt!) are exactly the same as those I’ve been raising on this blog over the past week.

Whatever fiddling around is done with traffic flows in the city centre won’t solve Salisbury’s problems and could make them a great deal worse by forcing even more traffic onto the ring road and generally making life more difficult for residents.

Sadly (because I’m not a great enthusiast for building roads through green fields) only a bypass, well away from existing development on the city boundaries, will achieve significant change.

Funny how the government can find money for projects like HS2, which will be an outdated white elephant before it’s even finished, yet they can blithely ignore the everyday traffic chaos blighting a safe Tory seat.

 

Drawbacks for patients and pets in People Friendly Streets scheme

WHEN my Mum was alive, I often had to take her to the doctor’s at Endless Street.

We used to park on a meter outside because she could only manage to walk a few steps. And she didn’t have a blue badge because she didn’t have a car.

How will patients with limited mobility manage once Endless Street becomes closed to non-residents under the People Friendly Streets scheme being proposed by Wiltshire Council?

Similarly, how will people whose pets are ill be able to access the Endell vet practice?

I’m not trying to be a killjoy here. I know our local cycling enthusiasts are cock-a-hoop at the opportunity to prioritise pedestrians and cyclists over motorised vehicles, and I do appreciate that this will improve the city’s air quality.

But the council says its experimental scheme will remove through traffic “without significantly inconveniencing residents and businesses”. How will that work, then?

NB Someone has posted a comment that it's not necessary to own a car in order to be given a Blue Badge. If so, I stand corrected. At my mother's previous address in the London Borough of Havering we were told we couldn't have a badge because there was no vehicle registered to her address.

I do not think that this materially affects the point I am making about access to Endless Street facilities for people with limited mobility, sick children, sick animals etc. but all constructive dialogue is welcomed on this blog.