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Time to make your views known
Dear
Friends,
Those of you who live in the valley of the Sid will know that the
last Neighbourhood Plan survey is active at the moment. It closes on 30th June
and you can find it online here., the other pages for the Neighbourhood Plan are this and this.
Two days ago East Devon District Council put up
an announcement giving the dates for the Port Royal Consultation. As you may
remember this was supposed to be just a preliminary exercise to establish the
area which might be suitable for redevelopment, but now it is a proposed scheme
which seems to be of about the same level as an outline planning application.
The announcement is here and as you will see there is little time to get one's
thoughts in order as the consultation is for the 26th and 27th June, just over a
week away!
Ex-leader of the Town Council, Councillor Jeff Turner, has
made it clear that there are ‘ no detailed designs of buildings’ at this stage;
however we should be in no doubt that this is an important threshold. We have
been told quite clearly that there will be 'gateways' in this process and that
after a gateway has been passed it will NOT be reconsidered under any
circumstances. This means that this consultation is our ONLY chance to influence
the basics of the design.
The design which the consultants will be
exhibiting will show us whether the general ideas are to have a human scale
mixture of different buildings which retains the Drill Hall and the current
atmosphere, or if it will be a huge block which obscures the views of the Hanger
as seen from the west end of the Esplanade, is alien to the spirit of the listed
buildings within the town and casts the Ham into shadow for much of the
day.
This Port Royal consultation and the Neighbourhood Plan Survey are
two chances we must take if we wish Councillors to take our views
seriously.
There is no information available on the Sidmouth Town Council
web site yet although they are the agreed lead on this consultation. This is
their page about Port Royal
I am attempting to find out exactly what
will be put up on EDDC and STC websites and will therefore be available to those
who are out of the area over the two days of the consultation.
I will be
at that consultation, and if the full display is not available on one of the
council sites I will take photographs and put them up online so everyone has a
proper chance to see it all.
With time so short I can not afford to wait
until I have all the information collected before I contact you so please
forgive me for the fact that there will be several short communications prior to
the consultation at Kennaway House.
Finally, for the moment, one of my
friends sent me this information about a Norfolk Drill Hall which has just been
saved, We need to work to persuade our elected leaders to see what these Norfolk
Councillors understand; that is is better to reuse what we have than to waste
our resources.
kind regards, Mary |
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