What a ridiculous way to plan for the future of Harnham

IT was a long haul for the city’s planning committee last Monday.

From a packed agenda, two key items stood out, both of which mean irrevocable change to the leafy character of Harnham.

On both of them, city councillors from all parties and none (me!) stood up for our residents and spoke out YET AGAIN against the inexorable advance of greenfield development.

First it was the 106 homes on land at Waldrons Farm - the first field on the right as you head out of Harnham towards Wilton.

Now it just so happens that the previous weekend I found myself chatting to someone who has reliable connections at Vistry Homes, the would-be developers of this field, who already have permission to erect 640 homes alongside the cattle market.

And I learned that what I’d feared was true. They want more.

In something called the SHLAA (strategic housing land availability assessment) carried out by Wiltshire Council a few years ago the larger site was actually reckoned to be capable of taking 1100-plus homes. And that’s what’s on their minds.

Just think of all the water run-off from that sloping land once it’s under concrete. 

Anyway, you’ll be pleased to hear that we objected to the Waldrons Farm plan on grounds of overdevelopment, lack of pedestrian and cycle paths to the station and city centre, poorly designed access to the main road (a mini roundabout would be better), the fact that the land lies under water for at least part of every winter, its potential archaeological value, its ecological value, and the impact on neighbouring properties.

I think you get the idea. Not a lot in its favour, really. And that’s without mentioning the combined contribution of the traffic these developments will generate to the jams at the Gyratory and Park Wall and to the rat-running through Quidhampton and up past the racecourse. We are obliged to consider only the effects of this individual application.

But what can we parish councillors do, up against a Tory-controlled Wiltshire Council struggling to meet targets dictated by its own party in government – a party that’s heavily dependent on donations from the construction industry?

Plus, when we consider these applications, we often have to do so without the benefit of reports by the specialist officers employed by Wiltshire. They aren’t ready in time, or at least they aren’t posted online in time. This means we have no idea whether these experts are going to back up our own concerns, which are based on our local knowledge.

So anyway. We asked for reports from the Environment Agency and from archaeologists.

We asked for a pedestrian and cycle path to the station and city centre.

Worried about the ecological impact so close to the river, we asked for foul water drainage to be dealt with by way of an engineered solution, rather than a ‘financial contribution’.

Then we had to go through the same exercise all over again.

This time it was 101 homes on the field between Odstock Road and the Rowbarrow estate.

The developers here, Bellway, have had to redraw their plans for archaeological reasons. 

So now they want to build right up to the magnificent belt of trees on your left as you go up to the hospital. Slap opposite the Lime Kiln Down county wildlife site.

Vehicles would access the housing estate from Odstock Road, competing with the hospital traffic and speeding ambulances, and cutting across the route where staff currently walk and cycle to work.

So we’ve got ecological impact – no more ground-nesting skylarks, the risk to the ecology of the beech tree belt, planted to mark the Coronation in 1953, including white helleborine orchids which are listed as a vulnerable ‘red list’ species. We’ve got NO community facilities included, we’ve got no properties for key workers despite junior doctors crying out for affordable rented grown-up housing, we’ve got YET MORE traffic feeding straight into the Harnham gyratory with no strategy to address this.

But what can a mere parish council do?

We’ve asked for the road access to be through Rowbarrow instead.

We’ve endorsed all the environmental concerns of Salisbury Area Greenspace Partnership, who want the chalk downland around the city skyline safeguarded as country parks.

But this is why governments both Labour and Conservative have favoured unitary authorities. Because they take power away from communities like ours, and make it harder for local voices to be heard.

We are left racing against the advancing diggers and bulldozers to come up with a Neighbourhood Plan to try to influence the decision makers. The same decision makers at Trowbridge who totally failed in their declared intention of relocating Churchfields businesses and developing that land for housing, which is what left us in this mess in the first place.

As if Salisbury is a ‘neighbourhood’, no more complex than any tiny village. It’s the only option we’ve got.

And that’s a disgrace.

So please, bear in mind that your city councillors are doing their best, but our best may not always turn out to be good enough. The system is stacked against us.