Bishops Waltham Action Group

Important Dates

There are no events at this time

Main Menu

Committee Login

web design

Plannng Update

Wednesday, 11 July 2012 03:30

We are aware that there is considerable interest in the reasons why Sainsbury’s have not yet started work on the Abbey Mill site. We hope this newsletter will provide you with some factual information.

• ‘Stopping up’ Station Road

• Audit commission and Winchester City Council

Many of you will know, or know of, John Hayter who throughout the last three years has fought his own battle to stop Sainsbury’s as an ‘outrider’ to the main campaign. Well, he has continued his activities and the following is an update on where he has got to...

‘Stopping up’ Station Road

As mentioned in Newsletter 34 (end March), in late February, the Secretary of State for the Department of Transport published a notice that she proposed to issue an order (under section 247 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990) to stop up a length of Station Road. Anyone wishing to object had 28 days within which to do so. The notice highlighted the fact that the stopping up order would only be authorised to enable the development that had been granted planning permission under reference 10/01650/FUL (Sainsbury’s Superstore). The proposed Order comprises the whole of Station Road and the B2177 crossing but does not extend into St George's Square. Objections could only be to this part of the permission, not the permission itself.

On 21st March John Hayter filed his objection to the Section 247 order with the Department of Transport (this is the objection mentioned in Newsletter 34).

The affected areas are the pedestrianised “Public Realm” or “Plaza” between the superstore and South Pond and the changes to Station Road where it meets the B2177 including the proposed Tucan crossing. This “Linkage Strategy” was designed to encourage Sainsbury’s customers to also visit and spend money in the town centre as a means of partially offsetting the trade the High Street is expected to lose. The plans rely on segregation of pedestrians and cyclists from traffic and landscaping to tempt shoppers to walk between the store and the town centre. Initial plans were judged by the Hampshire Architects' panel and Hampshire County Council’s Highways department as insufficiently effective and likely to create traffic problems. Some changes were made at which point HCC Highways gave their support to the proposals. The Station Road changes are thus a key element in the planning permission.

As a result of John Hayter’s objections to the proposed Station Road highway changes, and following a number of exchanges of letters with Sainsbury’s Transport Planning Consultants and Sainsbury’s solicitors, the Department of Transport announced on 27th June that a Public Local Inquiry is to be held at a date and place not yet announced.

The planning conditions attached to Sainsbury’s planning permission require that development cannot start until the Order is approved. Hence the absence of any start yet being made to the development of the site. The timescale for when the Inquiry may be held is unknown.

Audit commission and Winchester City Council

John Hayter has also been active highlighting to the relevant authorities that, in his view, some of the Section 106 agreements between Sainsbury’s and Winchester City Council (WCC), involving payments totalling £248,124, are unlawful under Circular 05/2005 relating to the Town and Country Planning Act (1990).

We understand that as a result, the Audit Commission’s appointed auditor for WCC is to investigate these potential payments due to be paid by Sainsbury’s under the Section 106 agreement. The details of the Section 106 agreement were detailed in Newsletter 34 (end March).

We also understand that this stage is reached only after an elector has made a written objection sufficiently sound to persuade the auditor to exercise his discretion to require WCC to justify their actions.

We gather that the possible outcomes, in descending order of severity are:

• Application by the Auditor to the Courts for a declaration that items are unlawful.
• An Immediate Report in the public interest without waiting for completion of the audit
• A report in the public interest on completion of the audit that is usually around December.
• A mention (or not) in the usual audit report.

We understand that, in the public interest, in terms of cost, the Auditor would only go to the Courts if he could not otherwise persuade WCC to take requisite actions with the same effect. Public Interest reports have to be responded to by WCC and usually contain recommended actions. The outcomes could make it necessary or expedient for WCC to reconsider the decision in whole or part. Although neither the Courts, the Auditor nor WCC Cabinet can direct what the Planning Development Control Committee's decision should be, what the Courts and/or auditor say would become a "material planning consideration" in reaching their decision.

It should be underlined that this is an audit of WCC, not Sainsbury’s, and as in all such cases there is no guarantee of any particular outcome.

In any event Sainsbury’s cannot start work until the outcome of John Hayter's Section 247 objections (see above) to the Station Road changes is known."

We hope this provides you with information on the most recent developments. We’ll be in touch with additional news and information shortly.

The Final Stages

Friday, 24 February 2012 20:58

Winchester City Council issued written planning permission on 1^st December 2011
Sainsbury’s say they hope to open their Bishops Waltham superstore in Spring 2013
Work on the Abbey Mill site is quite likely to start in March 2012

WHAT’S BEEN GOING ON?

We have just sent out an extensive email covering events over recent months – it runs to 7 pages and can be downloaded here, it covers events since May 2011.

In the email and its attachment we mention two letters – our final attempt to get the Planning Committee reconvened, and the stonewall response by WCC! These can be downloaded/read here: BWAG’s letter, WCC’s response.

The final documents

The written planning permission (called a Decision Notice) and the Section 106 agreement (the legal agreement) between them cover the contributions that Sainsbury’s will make to various funds (for example: £75,000 for town centre improvements – to be agreed with the Parish Council – and over £200,000 to improve St George’s Square). They also cover the agreement not to open a Pharmacy, Post Office, Dry Cleaning and Café, and they define the specific opening and delivery hours and makes further reference to proposed changes to the B2177 Winchester Road. Clearly, there are elements here that will require continuing vigilance – see below the Portswood situation covered below.

These two documents can be downloaded from these links:

Planning Permission: http://planningapplications.winchester.gov.uk/Planning/969672.pdf

Section 106 Agreement (over 100 pages long):

http://planningapplications.winchester.gov.uk/Planning/985450.pdf

What of BWAG now?

After the written permission was granted in December, we contemplated shutting down BWAG in the near term, but developments at Sainsbury’s Portswood superstore have changed our minds. As you may know Sainsbury’s are currently building a 4,465 square metres (net retail space) superstore in central Portswood and now, while building is still continuing they have already applied for changes to the conditions! They want:

To extend agreed opening hours of 8am-9pm Monday to Saturday to 7am-11pm instead
To open the car park Monday to Saturday from 6.30am-midnight (half an hour before and an hour after the store would shut)
To change current delivery time restrictions from 7am -11pm Mondays to Saturdays, to allow three deliveries to be received (or items despatched from the store) between the hours of 11pm-7am Monday to Saturday. On Sundays, instead of delivery being restricted to 8am-6pm, Sainsbury’s want to be able to make two deliveries after 6pm.
They also want to have the restriction lifted that prevents them opening an in-store pharmacy!

It is just so brazen to agree such core conditions in order to get permission, only then to apply for major changes even before the store is built. So BWAG will stay in place to do whatever it can to stop similar attempts here. We may not now be able to stop Sainsbury’s coming, but we can do our best to stop such flagrant, barefaced behaviour.

A potted history timeline

Because a lot of time has passed, we thought at this stage it would be worth time-lining some of the important dates in a quick recap:

2009

January – news seeps out that Sainsbury’s plan a superstore at Abbey Mill

May – Parish Council public meeting, BWAG formed

May – December, BWAG raises funds, lobbies and issues newsletters etc

2010

12 May – Bishops Waltham Surgery announce plans to relocate to Sainsbury’s site

29 June – Sainsbury’s submit planning application to Winchester City Council (WCC)

19 July – BWAG’s first leaflet and letter mailed to local residents

27 July – Sainsbury’s supporters’ group (BWAV) formed with Sainsbury’s support

30 July – BWAG hands in 4,500 signature petition to Leader of WCC

5 August – Initial deadline for letters of representation to WCC about application

5 August – Just under 2,000 letters of objection personally sent to WCC by deadline

6 August – Deadline initially extended to allow BW Parish Council to debate and vote

12 August – BW Parish Council objects to Sainsbury’s proposals and informs WCC

Mid August – WCC indicate they will be prepared to receive additional letters

Late November – Bishops Waltham Surgery writes to all it patients asking for support for Sainsbury’s proposals and the new surgery

2011

16 January – BWAV, sponsored by Sainsbury’s, conduct mass-mailing to gain support

19 January – BWAV and Surgery staff deliver 2,700 pro forma letters to WCC

February – Date for Planning Meeting on Sainsbury’s confirmed as 7^th April

February – BWAV deliver a further 2,000+ pro forma letters to WCC from their own mailing

15 March – BWAG’s second leaflet and letter to local residents mailed

30 March – WCC planners report published recommending approval of Sainsbury’s application

7 April – WCC Planning Committee votes 5-4 (by chairman’s 2^nd vote) to approve application

15 April – WCC submit their approval to Dept for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)

5 May – BWAG submits arguments for calling-in application alongside a new 3,000+ petition

5 May – DCLG confirms to WCC that it will not call-in the application

13 May – BWAG’s last newsletter (No 32) sent explaining situation

24 November – Section 106 Agreement signed by Sainsbury’s and WCC

1 December – Written Planning Permission issued

Thank You

We really would like to say a very big THANK YOU to everyone who has helped in this campaign. You are too numerous to mention but, in no particular order...

Thanks to everyone – 4,500 of you – who signed Pete Atkinson’s original petition.

Thanks to all of you who wrote such heartfelt letters to WCC – all 2,450 of you! Amazing!

Thanks again to everyone – 3,025 of you – who signed our last petition to Eric Pickles, an awesome number in just 12 days!

Thanks to everyone who volunteered to help, including distributing leaflets and flyers – simply invaluable.

Thanks to the many, many people who gave us donations, the campaign has cost many thousands of pounds and would have been impossible without that help. Thanks also to everyone who put money into our collection pots – it really helped.

Thanks to so many of you who contacted us with ideas, with offers of help, with news, with their recollections of the WCC Planning meeting etc.

Thanks to people, like Print It Now, who provided their services free or at cost.

Thanks to everyone who agreed to have a poster in their garden.

Thanks to everyone on the High Street who put up our posters, provided space to distribute our newsletters and persuaded people to sign the petitions.

Thanks to everyone who turned out for the Parish Council meeting in the Jubilee Hall in August 2010.

Thanks to everyone who came to the Guildhall for the handing in of the first petition in July 2010

Thanks to the 400 and more who attended the planning meeting itself in April 2011

Thanks to those, like John Hayter and Peter Stevens who acted as outriders to our main campaign and constantly nagged and harassed WCC and Sainsbury’s agents whenever the opportunity arose.

Thanks for reading our newsletters and staying in touch with us.

Attachments:
Extended Newsletter 33 v6.pdf	[ ]	144 Kb
Letter to Nick Parker about new information v2c.pdf	[ ]	274 Kb
WCC Tilbury letter 21_11_11.pdf	[ ]	220 Kb

Last Updated on Monday, 27 February 2012 20:44

Bishops Waltham Action Group

BWAG Newsletter

Important Dates

Main Menu

Committee Login