Port Royal and the Drill Hall
Dear Friends,
I have been to both days of
this Port Royal redevelopment consultation, needing to return on the second day
to clarify some details. I have spoken in great detail to officials from East
Devon District Council and Sidmouth Town Council, and to a member of staff from
the consultants Jillings-Heynes. They have filled me in on a lot of the
background thinking which is not detailed on the boards used for
display.
Unsurprisingly the intention is to demolish everything shown in
the Local Plan as ED03 and build a huge block of very expensive apartments with
the Lifeboat and the Sailing Club/Gig Club/etc housed beneath them. It is
proposed to be 5 storeys high in comparison with Trinity Court’s 4 storeys.
Trinity Court has the 4th floor set back to give an appearance to the front of 3
storeys so the proposed block appears much bigger. The Drill Hall does not
figure in these plans which I think is a wasted opportunity for the
town.
The online survey is at
http://eastdevon.gov.uk/port-royal-consultation/
The
opinions of the council officials were at odds in some cases. Although they both
agree that this is supposed to be a ‘concept’ there is disagreement as to
whether the massing of the building is more or less a fixed element or not. The
footprint is agreed to be a fixed element of the design even though the
footprint of the building is shown as covering some of the land which is part of
the Ham and therefore can not have anything higher than 7 feet tall built on
it.
When I pointed this out to the EDDC official I was told that details
like that would be sorted out when they had looked at the Land Registry
documents. When I replied that these documents had been publicly available for
some time on my site the line changed to ‘Well yes, we know where we can
actually build; but any developer would want to see the Land Registry entries
for themselves.’ When asked why a footprint which was ‘not possible’ was being
used, rather than an accurate one, I was told that the conversation had gone far
enough and would not be continued.
This does not make a good start to
what is supposed to be a public consultation.
The same disregard for
accuracy was shown when I pointed out how high the block was in the background
of the artist’s impression. I was told that it wouldn’t really look that big as
it was a distortion due to perspective! As most people know, perspective works
by things in the background looking smaller not larger!!
I will be making
photo montages and creating plans to flesh out the minimal drawings shown at the
consultation. They will appear on the www.drillhall.rescue.historic-sidmouth.uk site as a sub-page
of the Scoping Exercise page.
http://drillhall.rescue.historic-sidmouth.uk/scoping-exercise
They
will be going up over the next couple of days and I urge you not to complete the
survey until you have looked at them. The survey will be available online until
July 31st so you have a month to think about your response. If you have any
questions you would like to ask me I will do my best to pass on accurately what
I was told. I will not twist facts to support my beliefs.
Remember that
this consultation is a ‘gateway’ from which there is no going back.
Kind
regards, Mary |
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