QEB Update
Taylor Wimpey have been encouraged by Hart’s planning department to bring forward an application to build an additional 100 houses on the QEB site. These houses would be built on the site of the employment units which are in the original proposal.Given that the need for employment on the QEB site was identified in two public inquiries, it would appear to be a mistake for Hart to be recommending the move from employment to housing.
Planners are keen to emphasise the importance of ‘sustainable’ development but appear to view this as simply putting more housing alongside what already exists. This is based on the mistaken belief that where houses have already been deemed to be sustainable, then additional houses on the same development must also be sustainable.
Surely a sustainable development is one which caters for the needs of the people who will live there? This must mean including some form of opportunity for local employment, at least that was the opinion of two different planning inspectors.
Planners often seem somewhat insulated from the hard economic reality of life. Generally, buying a house requires you to have a job to pay off your mortgage and having a job usually means having a place to work.
With mass production now more economical in the Far East, a manufacturing led economic recovery in the UK is going to be reliant on small specialist companies. Equally, despite large modern office blocks lying empty as victims of ‘off-shoring’, successful smaller organisations still need somewhere to base their operations.
So, it would seem to be prudent to build small light industrial and small office buildings to complement housing developments. Without these, we are giving in to the notion that everyone either works from home, sits in a long traffic jam, or stands on a crowded train to commute to work.
Replacing an area dedicated to providing local employment with 100 additional houses is rather short sighted and doesn’t seem to fit in with what most people would consider ‘planning’ to be about.
QEB traffic calming consultations
As the QEB development progresses, it is expected that a number of traffic calming measures will be needed in order to manage the impact of all the extra traffic. Unfortunately Hampshire Highways seem to be convinced that the only effective traffic calming measure is build outs (often known as chicanes). They seem to have forgotten how dangerous and detested the chicanes where on Elvetham Road when they were first built in response to the Elvetham Heath development.Chicanes don’t work as a traffic calming measure because too many people speed up to get around them before any car approaching the other way. They are also dangerous because they force cars to drive head-on towards each other (how can that be safe?) and, as was proved on Elvetham Road, people who don’t expect them to be there promptly drive into them.
Speed bumps are generally detested because they are seen to damage vehicle suspension or impede vehicles with a lowered chassis. However, speed tables, such as those used at the road junctions along Fleet Road do seem to work. Unlike chicanes, everyone has to slow down for them but because the entire car goes up onto them before coming down the other side, they are not as damaging as speed bumps.
Despite much opposition from Quetta Park residents, Hampshire Highways insist that chicanes are the best option. They base this on the fact that although chicanes were criticized when proposed for some local roads, no one said they shouldn’t be put on roads around Quetta Park.
This is probably because, at the time, Highways did not draw attention to the fact that chicanes were proposed on Naishes Lane or Leipzig Road. Therefore, because no one objected on these specific roads, the Highways ‘Engineers’ seem to feel justified in putting them in!!
The moral of this story is if Hampshire consults in your area about traffic calming (or other highways works) for your local roads, then beware. If there are things you don’t think would work, then you should state this in writing, even if such measures don’t appear in the initial proposal.
A consultation on traffic calming for the roads closest to the site is expected imminently. Further consultations may happen in the coming year as more measures further afield come to be required.
Build outs on Leipzig Road
but are they safe?