Where do we go from here?

POSSIBLY the most frustrating thing for all of us who care about Salisbury is the number of good ideas and good intentions that we hear about, followed by ….. not a lot.

Nothing seems to really change. Or if it does, it takes an absolute age.

Take the Maltings and central car park, for example. Crying out for some creative regeneration. Vision after vision after framework after strategy. But fate always gets in the way.

Or the old British Heart Foundation site. No sign now of a budget hotel or a relocated library, let alone a new home for the poor old Young Gallery.

So, off I went last night to the college – where, to be fair, something has actually happened, and the rebuild is a huge, ongoing improvement.

I was there with a hundred or so well-meaning others for a Civic Society/Royal Society of Arts meeting to discuss the city’s recovery from the twin shocks of Novichok and Covid.

It was great to hear from speakers about how the college is focusing on fitting students for the world of work, about how our businesses are faring, about the need to bring back live performance and encourage wider participation in the arts, and about the Future High Streets funding to be invested in making our city centre more attractive.

There needs to be more consultation with the people of Salisbury in how best to spend this money before it becomes a fait accompli, warned the Civic Society’s Peter Dunbar. And it was pleasing to hear a Wiltshire Council officer acknowledge that they “could do consultation better”.

But it was our MP John Glen who hit a couple of nails on the head for me.

He senses people’s frustration that there is no single plan for improving Salisbury, he told us. (Perhaps there’s because the city needs to be allowed to ‘take back control’ of its destiny from Trowbridge, I thought, but I was too polite to say it.)

There are three outstanding challenges, as he sees it. 

First, to put the much-discussed ‘cultural quarter’ back atop the agenda, with a strategic look at how we use space in the Maltings. This, he feels, is something that would give Salisbury a distinctive ‘offer’ to visitors.

Second: Provision for young people. There are “significant inequalities’”in the city and there’s “levelling up” to be done locally. Too true.

And thirdly, to reconcile the future distribution of housing with green space and transport infrastructure. 

Well, as you can imagine, I was very happy to hear that.

At present we have a “diffuse set of strategies that have evolved over time”, he said. We have to work collectively with communities across South Wiltshire to decide where it will make sense to develop more housing, how we preserve green space, and how we improve our transport infrastructure.

Quite how we do that when a 'divide and rule' policy has deliberately left the parishes in our district with no formal means of joint working, I don’t know. But at least he sees the problem.

The Mayor, Cllr Caroline Corbin, made a pertinent point about the lack of diversity among those at the meeting and wondered what could be done to get members of our minority communities involved.

And Cllr Paul Sample pointed out quite rightly that we can’t rely on market forces to provide enough affordable housing for young people in an area of high prices and low wages.

But at the end of the evening – frustration, again. The same old problems had been given an airing. I'm not being rude. Everyone meant well. Everyone cared.

But no solutions. As John Glen said, no single overarching plan. And no mechanism that I can see under our present system for creating one.