OPINION: Letters to the editor of the Newbury Weekly News
Human scale solution to Kennet Centre is best
The continuing angst over a decision about the Kennet Centre is at the heart of all future town planning decision making.
The enticing proposition of permitting current development plans and moving on, with the accompanying eyesore of high-rise buildings a problem 10 years down the line, must be a great temptation to decision makers.
But with traffic likely to be banned from the centre eventually, the concept of a human scale solution like the old town matrix is surely a gut instinct that stays the hand in signing off such crass overdevelopment.
Despite all its supporters, the Kennet Centre is a hollow, soulless space that reflects past ideas of shopping behaviour.
Where are the visionary architects and planners who can embrace streets and plazas with human dimensions that offer points of interest and incorporate nature rather than towering concrete into the environment?
The cost is insignificant in the long term if the delay in approval creates an opportunity for reappraisal of priorities for the people of Newbury.
Tom Brown
Gore End
Loss of parking spaces a big blow to the town
The imposition of high-rise flats in the old Georgian heart of Newbury and the refusal of developers Lochailort to include any affordable or social housing in their 427 flats is bad enough.
They also insist that the Kennet Centre car park will be for the residents, with other local people only able to park there if there are spaces available.
Although all three of these unhappy proposals for the town are in direct contradiction of both local and national planning policy, planning officers are recommending they are given consent.
Our elected councillors are split on whether to agree, and allow it to go ahead.
Taking the parking issue alone, a part of the scheme and the huge implications for shoppers and visitors in the near future, particularly from south of the town has been given scant attention by reports in the NWN.
I have not met one person who is aware of these implication, and when I tell them they are appalled.
After demolition of 116 roof-top parking spaces and the construction of 127 new ones, the developer’s design leaves 475 parking spaces.
These are for 427 one-, two- and three-bedroom flats and the commercial units, as well as and all the current users of the existing car park.
Planning policy says developers should create 471 new spaces for this number of flats alone, let alone the new commercial units.
At peak times, this scheme leaves just four spaces for local people, with everyone else being directed to the station car park.
Often during the week, the station car park is full.
At the same time the enormous Sandleford development is about to get under way and the Wharf car park is being greatly reduced in capacity to make the area more attractive to visitors.
Several fundamental questions arise from this:
Where is the long-term strategy for the town in all this?
Do we need this number of new flats in the middle of the town when so many others are already being built and many remain empty?
How soon will a new multi-storey car park be needed and where will it be built?
Why does the council have planning policy about issues such as parking numbers and 30 per cent affordable housing and sympathetic design of new developments, if it is then cast aside when developers, in this case, from London, don’t want to follow it?
Can our local politicians and planning officer be truly said to be working in the best interest of local people or the developers?
(The mass signing of petitions, letters to the paper and the local authority and disregard for planning policy strongly suggest the latter.)
John Handy
Hamstead Marshall
It’s clear that we don’t want Eagle Quarter
You published a letter of mine regarding the Eagle Quarter in a recent issue – apparently I should have gone online via the council’s website (which I can’t get into, being technologically illiterate).
(There are a lot of us out here still writing and receiving letters by hand, quaint old hasbeens that we are.)
It seems that never the twain shall meet.
Those writing to your paper mentioning wanting Iceland etc back and the warmth and convenience of the Kennet Centre among other things, don’t know about the 114 online objections and vice versa.
I’ve read through most of those on the website – all say the same – the Eagle Quarter is ugly/ unnecessary/etc etc.
It’s glaringly obvious that most Newbury people don’t want it.
Why are they not being listened to?
Why is the council even still discussing it?
You have to wonder.
Today I was at a Christmas Fair and asked several ladies at random what they thought of the Eagle Quarter – all said without hesitation the same as the other 114.
All this is without taking into account the chaos that will be caused by actually building this monstrosity.
None of the objectors seem to realise what they could be in for.
The Kennet Centre could easily be revived and now that Storm Bert is here, with a long list of others to follow, surely all can see how much more sensible that would be in the present climate.
Perhaps the eagle should land somewhere else.
Joy Nelson
Hampton Road, Newbury
Thousands oppose Kennet Centre plan
Joy Nelson quotes in her recent letter published in the NWN that there were only 92 objections to Lochailort’s plans to renew our Kennet Centre.
I believe she was referring to the figure given to councillors (at the planning meeting on November 13) to approve Lochailort’s plans.
I was at that meeting.
I heard that statement but it takes some stretch of the imagination to agree that the figure is correct and it is a very misleading figure.
This figure ignores the two online petitions and the signatures collected from the public in Newbury town centre and also the many letters published in the NWN opposing the plans.
The two online petitions collected: 1,852 signatures (first petition) and 1,168 (second petition), both opposing Lochailort’s plans.
Removing the names of people who signed both petitions gives the number objecting from these two petitions alone as 2,743.
This does not include the objections on the council’s website, signatures collected in the town centre nor the letters published in your columns.
I feel the figure given on November 13 was misleading.
Eleanor Mullens
Hamstead Marshall
Pavement hazards are totally unacceptable
Whilst I applaud the theory behind new proposed laws regarding people parking on pavements and arguing it’s crucial for the safety of disabled individuals and blind or vulnerable people and also parents with buggies; I have to wonder about the hypocrisy of the planners and politicians who want to make a new plan without considering what the previous crowd of ‘leaders’ did to make the problem in the first place.
New houses built now have roads that are narrower than the roads most of us have grown up with.
A car parked on a new estate now, will probably not let a fire engine through to its destination if a car is parked on the street.
A two-bedroom house with one parking space is lunacy.
A three-bedroom house with two teenagers, who each want their own car, is frankly impossible; with the neighbours falling out with one another over the limited space available to growing families.
Ask any Newbury police constable about the problems at the Newbury Racecourse apartments on a weekend.
On a non-racing weekend!
And now to London.
Oh boy, what an obstacle course the mayor has created in his zest for money.
I have to travel frequently to Moorfields SE1 for an eye problem.
Fortunately I have one good eye.
The 40-minute walk from Farringdon Station to the hospital is a minefield of legal electric bikes strewn all over the pavements.
Lime green ones (called Lime creatively but just as bitter!) and red ones (who knows who owns them?) are just dropped at every junction, every traffic light corner and the whole place looks like some dystopian scene from a zombie movie.
Even able sighted people are stepping over plies of them!
I can negotiate with my one good eye but I feel absolutely terrified for the other individuals who are less fortunately sighted who have to negotiate the pavements ( yes, the flipping pavements!) intended originally to keep them safe.
I see them in Moorfields with their sunglasses and eye patches and I am amazed as to how they got to the hospital at all.
As for the individuals who drop a legal bike across the dotted region, at traffic lights, designed to help blind individuals and blind dogs know they are near a major crossing, I have no words.
The journey from Farringdon to Moorfields should be walked by the mayor and the invisible traveller, Starmer guy, to see if they can negotiate the world of walking that the rest of us have to work with.
Maybe Starmer’s glasses, paid for by Lord Ali will be helpful and guide him on his journey.
Maybe bring a guide dog and see what the poor folk have to negotiate.
Tony Quinn
Greenham
Storm Bert didn’t beat us on our great bazaar day
We would like to thank everyone who turned out in such atrocious conditions to attend our Christmas Bazaar. Thank you for the many generous donations and support of the grand raffle.
Our special thanks and admiration go out to our volunteers who worked so hard to raise £3,700 for the church and adjoining Majendie Community Hall.
May we be one of the first to wish all NWN readers a very merry Christmas.
Brian Nobes
Churchwarden, and St Mary’s Parochial Church Council, Speen
Angels at the Starbucks on retail park
I was sitting, alone, in Starbucks at Newbury Retail Park, with a very large cup of coffee to negotiate, when I suddenly began to cry.
I was crying over the death of my mother, and the fact that my son loved her so much, that when she died, he wanted to die also.
I sat there for quite a while, just quietly weeping and wondering if my mother, now in heaven, knew how much, every day, I long to be able to pick up the phone and tell her, about every joy, and every sorrow, and to hear the love in her voice when she replied, with such unfailing wisdom and kindness.
I then sent a text message to my niece, which read: “Really missing Granny today. Where are the Angels, when you need one?”
Then I looked up, and there she was.
A beautiful blonde lady all dressed in white.
She gently placed her hand on my arm and asked if I was OK, and if I needed a hug.
After receiving the hug this beautiful (in every way) lady invited me to join her and her equally beautiful sister, who was expecting a baby Angel on December 3.
They were, they said, from Oxford and enjoying a Christmas shopping trip.
But for me, they were heaven sent.
I do not know their names, only that their hearts were full of love, for a stranger in need.
May you all, find your Angels, this Christmas.
Anne Marie Brian
Dene Way, Newbury
