skip to main content

Accessibility and Display Options

Choose accessibility and display settings
Text Preferences
Colour Schemes
Cookies
Save Close


 


SP4 - Strategic Opportunities at Fareham Town Centre

Object

it seems that welbourne is not enough. I understand the need for housing but our rd serpentine is already very busy. j11 is very busy and there seems no real allcurence that the infrastructureis being fully addressed.

PO16


Object

1. 600 dwellings and a thriving evening economy are incompatible. The noise and anti-social behaviour associated with an evening economy would render the proposed 600 dwellings as undesirable places to live. 2. An additional 600 dwellings in the town centre is far too many and much higher than the population densities in other parts of Fareham. 3. An addition 100 dwellings in the civic quarter would rob future generations of Fareham residents of any central community space on which to site future facilities. 4. I've lived in Fareham since 1987 and throughout that period there has always been multiple units in the shopping centre vacant. Currently there are 13 charities shops. Although we have lost a couple of restaurants there has never ever been so many cafes in Fareham. Fareham does NOT need more shops, cafes and restaurants. FBC needs to adopt a radical and innovative approach to prevent the further decline of Fareham's town centre for example contracting the retail centre of Fareham. Fareham struggles to support a retail area that includes parts of the High Street, the length of West Street and the shopping centre. More shops are not the answer to Hedge End, Gunwharf, Whiteley and the proposed new retail centre in Welborne. 5. How about a community centre in the centre of Fareham with meeting rooms, a hall etc? Fareham lacks the central community facilities that other Hampshire towns of a similar size have.

PO16


Object

Draft Fareham Local Plan Comments Introduction/General Comments The Society accepts that new housing and employment allocations will have to be made to meet the identified requirements over the extended period to 2036. However, the Society has objected to the development of many of the sites identified as developable at many previous local plan examinations and in relation to planning applications. It therefore finds it difficult to support the proposed allocations in the draft plan because of the loss of countryside/undeveloped land and the impact on infrastructure. Unlike most of the people and organisations commenting on the Draft Plan, the Society covers the whole Borough and does not favour development in one part of the Borough rather than any other part. The Society supports the identification of the most suitable sites through the use of sound and comprehensive evidence wherever they are in the Borough. It has therefore concentrated on the soundness of the published evidence and how that appears to have been used to select the preferred sites. The Society notes that there is strong opposition to many of the allocations, particularly the larger housing sites in Portchester, Warsash and Newgate Lane. The Society believes that this opposition is, in part due to the way in which the plan has been prepared and in part due to the lack of information on the perceived adverse impact on infrastructure and community identity of the developments proposed. People are afraid that the proposed developments will have a significant adverse impact on them and there is little that they can do to alleviate this other than suggesting that the development goes elsewhere. An earlier consultation on the ‘issues and options, as carried out for the now adopted Sites and Policies Plan, would have significantly improved understanding of the need for additional allocations, the options available and the impact of each option. It is the role of the Borough Council to set out options/ alternatives and not the role of consultees as suggested at the CAT meetings. Other authorities appear to carry out much better forms of consultation, with evidence available as soon as it is prepared and genuine options and opportunities for changing the plan in the light of consultation responses. Our experience in recent years is that Fareham does not take enough notice of /continued……. 2, responses; it does not make evidence available as soon as it is prepared and rarely, if ever, makes any changes reflecting the responses. For example, the Society spent a considerable time responding to the Town Centre Vision consultation, but the report on the consultation responses does not summarise the Society’s views or if or how they were taken into account. The Society assumes that if sites currently included as proposed allocations are deleted, any replacement sites will be subject to proper public consultation. Comments on the Draft Plan Strategy The Society is pleased to see that after well over ten years of relying on totally unrealistic start dates and build rates for Welborne the council has accepted competent advice and included more realistic build rates in the Welborne background paper. However, the Society notes that the rate of employment development lags behind housing development housebuilding so significantly that it results in a plan that will increase commuting. The permission for the IFA2 and the proposals for a significant increase in the amount of employment development at Daedalus result in its continued inclusion within the Strategic Gap being unsustainable and an impediment to the protection of other parts of the gap (see comments on Boundary Review. Paragraphs 4.21-4.23 do not fully recognise the scale of the impact of the proposals on the gap; the development of Faraday Park, IFA2 and the Swordfish Business Park will reduce the ‘expansive views southwards across the airfield’ and reduce the perceived gap to a much smaller settlement gap between two business parks at the northern end of the site. Fareham Town Centre The extensive development/redevelopment proposed in Fareham Town Centre will need to be carefully phased in order to avoid excessive disruption to the area. For example, the new multi-storey car park on the Market Quay site would have to be provided before the Osborn Road multi-storey car park is demolished. The Society supports the residential redevelopment of suitable sites, but some of the sites proposed for housing are not likely to provide good quality residential environments and should be allocated for employment uses. Many of the proposals for housing in the town centre appear to be over ambitious. The proposals for the Civic Quarter and Market Quay with multiple other uses appear to be particularly excessive/ unrealistic for the size of the sites. The over-emphasis on housing at the expense of convenient parking, for example in the Civic Quarter, at Market Quay and the closest part of Lysses car park to the High Street will undermine the viability of the remaining shops in the Town Centre. The draft Plan appears to cause more harm to the viability of the Town Centre rather than to enhance it. It is most important that more detailed plans adequately address safe pedestrian access between West Street and the Civic Quarter, particularly when the shopping mall is closed.

Anonymous submission


Comment

Large Format Response - Ref0080

GU1




Back to top of page Back to Top How to get here
Fareham Borough Council, Civic Offices, Civic Way, Hampshire, PO16 7AZ
Tel: +44 (0) 1329 236100 | Mobile Text/Photo: 07860 098627
RSS Feeds