Police station latest: Thoughts of the Commissioner

OUR police are fed up with their current arrangement at Bourne Hill alongside Wiltshire Council.

The limitations of their facilities mean they can’t give the public the service that they would like to, and that the public want.

That’s frustrating and morale-sapping, and has led to some experienced officers quitting.

It’s not me saying that. It was the Police and Crime Commissioner, Philip Wilkinson, responding to questions on Friday at an online focus group to which I was invited.

Let me say at this point that I am much more impressed by Mr Wilkinson than I was by his predecessor Angus Macpherson. Actually, that’s not hard! But this former senior military officer and security policy adviser is clearly trying to engage with the whole community as he fine-tunes his Wiltshire & Swindon Police and Crime Plan for the next few years.

He’s been looking for a stand-alone site, preferably within the ring road, since he took office in May, and it’s proving hard to find. He’s been told categorically that he can’t have the old police station on Wilton Road.

He needs 1.5 acres, including parking, if Salisbury is to have a custody suite.

So if he can’t negotiate a better deal spacewise at Bourne Hill, he might have to look for somewhere a bit more fringe, although he hasn’t ruled out going for a new-build if he has to, and he’s got some money set aside just in case.

It was a fascinating and very open conversation. Following previous consultations he’s acknowledged that confidence in the force is not as high as it should be, and that people feel less safe than they used to. Also that 47% of people would not feel confident to contact their local Crime Prevention Team. 

He described this as “disturbing”, and accepted that better vetting and training of recruits is required.

He promised more frontline officers, but pointed out that these might not be visible ‘beat’ officers. They might be investigating cybercrime, or domestic abuse, or modern slavery.

But his top priorities are improving reporting of crimes and response to them, along with reducing violence and serious harm. Exactly as it should be.

The public’s priorities, he reported, are antisocial behaviour, speeding, drugs, rural crimes such as flytipping and hare-coursing, and violence, including knife crime.

So, a lot to tackle there.

To help do that, he’s seeking a rise in the policing element of our council tax of 4.3% - equivalent to £10 a year, or 83p a month, on a Band D property.

And I did like his parting shot: “If I don’t deliver, get rid of me.”

He’s still consulting on his Making Wiltshire Safer plans until the end of this month. If you want to read or comment on them, or ask questions at a Facebook meeting with him, copy and paste this link:

www.wiltshire-pcc.gov.uk/the-pcc-and-you/have-your-say/making-wiltshire-safer/

Climate of despair

I HAVE just had to walk away from the News At Ten after 15 minutes. So, halfway through the bulletin.
The major part of what I’ve just watched focused (quite rightly) on the way we can’t really tackle humanity’s headlong hurtling towards climate doom without the presence of India, China and Russia at the Cop summit.
Next up, the sepulchral tones of Orla Guerin (an incredibly brave journalist for whom I have the utmost admiration) on how deforestation is dooming us all.
"Yes but," is all I could say as I literally went from sitting room to kitchen with my fingers in my ears to save myself from further distress.
Yes but, what can we do about it?
There is nothing, despite the daily diet of hand-wringing fed to us by our TV sets, that we ordinary, relatively comfortable Western folk can do that will have the slightest effect on the really big causes of these problems. 
Sure, as individuals we can eat less meat. We can recycle more. We can buy less tat. We can buy a packet of wildflower seeds and feel good about planting them.Yes, I do all that.
BUT
We don’t even have a planning system in the allegedly enlightened UK that can force developers to include climate-friendly measures such as solar panels, heat pumps, EV charging structure, on homes that are being built right now, despite everything we know about the damage we are inflicting on the planet.
Tell me why I shouldn’t despair.

The unitary system leaves Salisbury unable to defend itself

REDUCING a city like Salisbury to parish council status is like forcing someone to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
It’s the main service centre for smaller towns and villages for miles around. It’s got a hospital that serves an even wider area.
It’s where so many roads converge, as we know to our detriment.
Yet developers can blithely work up plans that will have a massive impact on our community and our lifestyle and ‘explore’ them informally with Wiltshire Council without the people of Salisbury even being informed, let alone having any input.
If not for social media, it could have been ages before we heard about proposals so large in scale that they would effectively join Salisbury to Amesbury.
And by then it might well have been too late to exert any real influence over the outcome. 
I’m talking about 1,200 homes at Vineys Farm alongside the A345, opposite Archer’s Gate.
I’m talking about a huge new 146-acre extension to the business and light industrial development at High Post.
And I’m talking about another scheme for business development and 500 homes on an enormous 355-acre site running south from there to a point opposite the new Longhedge housing estate.
Amesbury town councillors did know about the Vineys Farm plan. Most city councillors didn't have a clue. Because none of these greenfield sites lies within the Salisbury parish boundary, arguably they are none of our business. 
Patently, any one of them alone would have a significant impact on the city’s inadequate infrastructure, particularly on our roads. Their combined impact is mind-boggling.
We can’t say no to all development and expect it to go away.
But bearing in mind Salisbury's role at the heart of south Wiltshire its residents, via their city (parish) councillors, ought to be involved - or at the very least informed - right from the word go when a major site allocation right on its doorstep is contemplated, and not just 'consulted' once it's effectively a fait accompli.
As should other neighbouring parishes that may be affected. It's simple courtesy.

For all I know these schemes, which are not yet on any official shortlist, may come to nought in the end.
But right now, the south of the county (indeed, the whole of southern England) is looking like a very happy hunting ground for the volume building industry.

And if any of this land does find its way onto Wiltshire’s list of  strategic sites, important decisions on how it is developed will be taken not by local people, but by a strategic planning committee in Trowbridge made up of councillors from all over the county who meet in the middle of most normal people’s working day, because that’s a) the most efficient way to get things done or b) the easiest way to discourage pointless protests, depending on your point of view.

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

Would you use this car park? It's an embarrassment

IMAGINE you’re a day tripper keen to experience the delights of Salisbury. 
Just what the city’s economy needs.
“Ah, there’s a convenient car park,” you say to yourself as you spot the Culver Street stack next to the ring road. “I’ll pull in there.”
Well, this is the sight that will greet you, as it greeted me on a mercifully quick tour of inspection on Wednesday.

Graffiti, litter-strewn stairwells, windows covered in green slime, and an overwhelming stench of wee.
Presumably not helped by the fact that anyone wishing to use the facilities would have found them locked, and the doorways so filthy that only the truly desperate would have tried to open them anyway.
And acres of desolate, empty space. Not a soul was parked on the top floor despite the fact that it offers a wonderful view across the city’s old rooftops to the Cathedral.

                   

You do get people up there, though. Yobs. One of them peed on a passer-by down below the other week. For a laugh, I suppose. Fortunately the intended victim dodged out of the way in time.
Wiltshire Council owns this dump, collects the takings and is responsible for its maintenance. 
There was talking of tarting it up as part of the People Friendly Streets scheme but those in charge of the cash flow (it’s complicated) didn't like it when residents said no to a ban on through traffic. 
Wiltshire Council leaders promised massive 'savings' when they took over control of our city. Well, they're certainly saving a few quid here.

Jam tomorrow

I’VE lost count of the number of people who’ve come up to me,  before and since the local elections, with real concern in their voices and asked: “Can you do anything about this housing development up the road?”
They mean the 740 homes that'll be going up on the outskirts of West Harnham, along both sides of Netherhampton Road.
And my explanation has had to be: "Sorry, no. Wiltshire Council has already given permission. Salisbury City Council doesn't have the power to do anything about it.”
Despite the fact that these housing allocations were stitched up  some time ago, they remained by far the biggest issue on the doorsteps. I don't think anyone outside Harnham truly appreciates how much the impact of the extra traffic queuing for the jammed-up Gyratory is dreaded.

Now I hear the sound of gears slowly grinding into motion. Noises are being made about 'improving' the junctions at Park Wall, Harnham Gyratory and Exeter Street, and I hope to be able to tell you more after a briefing from Wiltshire later this month.

I suspect any investment will have far more to do with the increasing number of juggernauts thundering past our homes since this suburban road was designated a major route to the ports than it does with our parochial worries. I also suspect it won’t alleviate residents’ concerns about living in the middle of a constant and ever-increasing stream of traffic, albeit one that’s moving a bit faster. 

But you know me, I’m just an old cynic.