Bishops Waltham Action Group

On the 18th January, representatives of Sainsbury’s supporters group BWAV and the Bishops Waltham GP Practice jointly handed in 2,700 letters to Winchester City Council.

The ‘Trojan Horse’ letters

Most of these are the standard template letters mailed out by the Surgery in late November. They asked, you may recall, for patients’ response “in support of the Surgery element of Sainsbury’s planning application”. This was, as we said at the time, at the very least disingenuous, if not deliberately deceptive, because it may well have suggested to susceptible patients that they could indeed have just the ‘surgery element’ without Sainsbury’s – which is simply not the case in this application. To claim – as BWAV now do – that these are “letters of support for the proposed Sainsbury's supermarket for Bishop's Waltham” shows how economical with the truth their campaign has now become.

What is disappointing is that there is no sign of the many letters that we know were sent into the Surgery objecting to the application. It seems that the only letters of objection that have seen the light of day are those sent into WCC planners directly and that now appear on their website. (Most can be seen at http://planningapplications.winchester.gov.uk/PlanningWeb/Results.aspx?ID=10%2f01650%2fFUL&tab=4&PAGE=52&ITEMS=50).

Canvassed letters

The remaining letters are the standard template letters that BWAV have collected in their door-to-door canvassing. They turned to using these when, after 4 months of effort, they had only generated 300 individual letters of support for Sainsbury’s plans. This compares to over 2,000 individual letters of objection.

Standard letters

Because all of these are standard template letters that required only a name and address – most not even a signature – there must be doubt over the weight accorded to them, as such a large number of additional representations. In our view they should only count as a multi-part petition and as such be treated as a single submission – as our 4,500 properly signed petition has been.

Now a new letter

Some, but by no means all, residents of Bishops Waltham – and some as far away as Wickham and Knowle – have just received a flyer from BWAV again asking for another set of standard template letters to be dated, named, addressed and returned to them in a FREEPOST envelope.

Given that the letters of objection that were sent into the GPs’ surgery have disappeared, we recommend this time that you do the following:

Date the letters, add your name, address and signature at the bottom in the space provided, strike the letter through and then overwrite ‘I object to this application’, ideally adding a reason – BWAV provide plenty of ammunition in the letter with which you can easily disagree!

Or you can enjoy hand editing BWAV’s letter – as happened to the GP’s letter (see examples at http://planningapplications.winchester.gov.uk/Planning/861919.pdf and http://planningapplications.winchester.gov.uk/Planning/861920.pdf).

Then please send the letter in directly to Nick Parker, Winchester planning officer, at the address at the top of the letter so that your opposition is clearly noted this time round.

Please urge any of your friends to do the same. If you have already discarded the letter you can download a copy of itbelow this article. It is available as a pdf and as a Word document – should you wish to digitally edit it and email it to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it !

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUING SUPPORT – IT IS VITAL!

Attachments:

BWAV Letter Word Doc	[ ]	24 Kb
BWAV Letter PDF Version	[ ]	43 Kb

Very sensibly Sainsbury’s, the present owners of Abbey Mill, have made a further planning application for the site to Winchester City Council.

They have applied to renew the existing planning permission granted in 2008 for

• 70 new homes (23 affordable)
• Flexible business units & new office space
  • Ancillary roads, parking & amenity areas
  • Upgrading work to Abbey Mill, Abbey Field and South Pond……

providing an anticipated 180 new and varied jobs for Bishops Waltham residents.

Incidentally, the 2008 plan also offered the allocation of space on the site for a new doctor’s surgery

Artist’s impression (aerial perspective) of the Wilson Homes’ 2008 permitted application for Abbey Mill, Bishops Waltham

If you would like to register your support for this constructive use of the Abbey Mill site rather than an out of scale, out of place and out-of-town superstore, write to

Nick Parker,

Winchester City Council, Planning Department,

Colebrook St,

Winchester SO23 9LJ

Please quote planning reference no. 10/03127/FUL

Response to Professor Wrigley’s Report (2010)"Revisiting The Impact of Large Food Stores on Market Towns and District Centres". Southampton University

It is interesting to note that Winchester City Council planning department has received correspondence urging it to consider the findings of Prof Wrigley's report - "Revisiting The Impact of Large Food Stores on Market Towns and District Centres" - in the context of Sainsburys application to build a superstore in Bishops Waltham.

It is interesting because the correspondent is clearly supportive of the application. the whole report should be read with more than a cursory nod to its headline if a clear understanding of its findings in the context of both general retail development and more specifically the proposal for the Abbey Mill site in Bishops Waltham is to be had.

Professor Wrigley, along with some other academics, has been consistent in his views for the past decade that in certain circumstances big supermarket development can enhance the retail offering of existing, usually urban, communities. There are indeed examples around the country to suggest that supermarkets can and do act as an anchor or a hub for local economies but only when these circumstances are in evidence.

So what are these circumstances that are considered central to beneficial intervention of supermarkets to local economies?

They are

- that the development should be in a 'town centre' or 'edge of centre' development - this is measured in planning law as being within 300 metres of the existing town centre, with clear physical access and linkage. This figure is not an arbitrary one; it has been calculated and introduced into law by national planning experts and legislators. This condition is clearly expressed by Wrigley in his general discussions surrounding the developments of PPG6 to PPS4.

- that to act as an anchor for social or economic regeneration, the development should be located in a socially and/or economically degenerated area.

Neither of these 'circumstances' exists in Bishops Waltham.

It can thus be absolutely inferred that, in the light of his agreement that the move away from 'out of centre ' development to the sort of town centre development that "reflect the post?PPG6 decade?long

trend towards more sensitive ‘with the grain’ integration of new stores into pre?existing centre structures", Professor Wrigley would agree that the siting of the proposed Sainsburys superstore at Abbey Mill is ENTIRELY INAPPROPRIATE for the vitality and viability of the existing local Bishops Waltham economy.

To claim that any part of Professor Wrigley's report is supportive of the circumstances that surround the Sainsburys superstore proposal in Bishops Waltham is, I am afraid, evidence that the correspondent has either not read the report, has simply not understood it or is seeking to deliberately misrepresent its findings.

Were the correspondent to want further expert evidence that the development is 'out of centre', he should read the minutes from the Hampshire Advisory Panel of Architects meeting held with both SSL advisers and WCC planners on Thursday 18th November 2010. They agree that it is an out of town store and they are clearly very concerned about the effectiveness of the 'link' between the town centre and the proposed store. In their view, this is further reinforced by the fact that the car park is in the store basement, another obvious reason for shoppers to be much less likely to make a linked trip.

Finally, Hampshire County Council Environment Department's senior engineer, Graham Wright, in his report to the WCC of the 28th October 2010, also identifies very clearly the environmental barrier caused by the main road making any kind of natural and easy access between the site and the town centre difficult and dangerous and as a consequence recommends refusal of the application.

So far, nearly 2,200 people have written their own personal, individual letters of objection to WCC. This is a staggering number! Thank you!

Each raise one or more ‘material considerations’ in planning terms which WCC’s planning officers will have to address. The BWAG team has gone through every piece of correspondence on the Winchester planning site (no mean feat with about 2,500 documents). The animation below shows the issues raised:

To view it in full screen, click on the small icon near the bottom right of the window below, it has small outward facing arrows.