Last July, with the city council poised to launch another consultation on Station Approach, the Chronicle published a helpful explainer (https://www.hampshirechronicle.co.uk/news/20260732.history-station-approach-scheme/). It started:  'Winchester is rich not just in history and heritage but also in long-running planning issues.'  It ended by referring to the alternative document I produced and distributed in April 2020 to all councillors, residents close to the site, and a few others I hoped would be opinion-formers.  Local residents and heritage professionals were enthusiastic, councillors ignored it.

As your article said, I proposed that only the Gladstone Street car park should be developed, for 20-30 units of social housing, the only housing Winchester genuinely needs.  The landscaping including the lovely triangle of silver birches that was part of the design of the Hampshire Record Office would all be protected.  I suggested that the former South Western Inn would make a good boutique hotel.  Two years later the HRO itself has been listed by Historic England, but its landscape setting is threatened.  The old Inn is safe but remains empty over a year after refurbishment as offices.  The councillor who told a friend of mine that the site was too important for council housing is no longer a councillor but her party is still in charge.

While most readers will be familiar to the point of exhaustion with WCC planning wrangles, they may not know that earlier this month the prestigious architectural award, the Soane Medal, was given to the architect, Peter Barber, on whose work I based my suggestions.  He specialises in very dense, low-rise housing, generally on small sites, mostly for local authorities.

In his speech on receiving the medal, Barber said: “We could end the housing crisis overnight, if we wanted to. We should introduce private sector rent controls, halt the selling of council houses under right-to-buy, and build 150,000 council homes a year funded by direct taxation.”

Station Approach is undeniably a brownfield site, but Winchester might reflect on this when discussing density and pondering calls from developers for yet more green land and ever-diminishing proportions of genuinely affordable housing.

 

Judith Martin,

Romsey Road,

Winchester