The extension of Whiteley is known as a Major Development Area or MDA. The assumption is housing development will begin in 2012. The consulation of Whiteley residents raised only a few concerns:
Consultation with the Whiteley community during earlier stages of preparing Winchester’s Local Development Framework has indicated that there is, in principle, no great controversy regarding further development. Understandably, however, existing residents are very concerned that it should help to resolve existing infrastructure issues and have as little detrimental impact as possible on themselves.
Afair assessment if understated perhaps.
During public participation following the presentation, concerns were raised that mistakes made during the creation of the existing Whiteley development (relating mainly to insufficient school places and the incomplete Whiteley Way) would be compounded by the development of an additional 3,000 homes. In reply Mr Tilbury stated that, on the contrary, the new MDA was an opportunity to resolve some of these existing problems, via the developer’s financial infrastructure contributions.
Fine words and no doubt meant to reassure. However, we should remember that we are still sitting on the developers contributions from the 1990s build and the developers certainly wont contribute to a school servibg the existing Whiteley development.
But then we get the knockout blow:
The Forum then discussed the timing and sequencing of the infrastructure and noted that, whilst there was a demand to achieve much of this early on in the development, there were a number of constraining factors to this ambition. Not least amongst these was cost. Developers’ ability to provide infrastructure items was often determined by the cash-flow achieved from the sell of new dwellings; therefore legal agreements often required items to be produced after the completion of a certain number of dwellings. Other constraints included the planning process and the ability of partners, such as the education authority to build and operate what could initially be schools with less than full capacities. However, notwithstanding these constraints, Mr Tilbury underlined that officers and Members were very clearly aware of the issues regarding infrastructure needs in Whiteley (such as education and roads) and that these would be secured in legal agreements and provided as soon as practicably possible.
I'm not sure how Mr Tilbury can say notwithstanding these constraints as they are significant and the root cause of our current problems. The education authorities will not commit to building a school for the existing Whiteley surplus as they claim they have no money. Secondly the developers will not build roads until so many houses have been completed and as we saw with Yew tree Drive they can stay below that number for some time and also get the number in increased. So how many houses will there be and how many cars and schoolchildren before the infrastructure is built.
Then we get the view of the developer :
Mr Barker stated that this early draft would be subject to many changes as work progressed, but one of the main issues it had already identified was the that original route of Whiteley Way would need to be revisited. The route which had received planning consent some years ago, not only bisected the area likely to form the new MDA, but was also crossed the most environmentally sensitive area of the landscape. Neither would be considered acceptable impacts today and therefore the route would need to be reconsidered, as would the primary purpose of the road, which was no longer viewed as a potential distributor route.
So Whiteley way is no longer planned to be a distributor road. So going forward with the existing houses, businesses and school runs we will still only have a single distributor road into Whiteley. So while Mr Tilbury may see the MDA as an opportunity to resolve the problems of the school and the roads I dont see practicably how this will be done, in fact I can only see it getting worse.
