What motivates me to write some of the longer posts for the HCS website, the question has already been asked and the answer is here:
“It’s good stuff, but why are you writing it and who do you want to read it?”
Those are the two questions that my ever-patient partner recently asked me after quietly but ruthlessly marking-up the first ‘final draft’ of a three thousand six hundred word Havant Civic Society blog post, blissfully unaware that her innocent comment would generate this post as a response. The first question was the tougher, the second more straightforward.
Why do I bother to write this stuff?
The question that’s proving tricky to answer. First and foremost, I feel the need to report the facts behind some of the more significant decisions affecting the town since it is highly likely that nobody else will bother. Without any analytical record of past mistakes, we’re likely to continue repeating them.
I write partly because I enjoy trying to ‘join up the dots’ in an attempt to bring together the disparate facets of a complicated story. Rather than argue from a single point of view, I have a nagging habit of trying to process multiple points of view within a single overarching context. And that’s an approach that probably doesn’t suit all readers.
I’m also getting rather tired of the ‘slow-motion train crash’ approach to strategic thinking that appears to have haunted Havant Borough since the 1990s.
People process thoughts and inputs in different ways. Some are world class experts in a single field, like the cabinet-maker who crafts exquisite decorative marquetry, others like the Canadian academic whose life during our shared university days revolved around a colony of small flat periwinkles on the shore of the Menai Straights.
I’m more of a ‘jack-of-all-trades and master of none’. However, if there’s one thing that the past seventy years has taught me, it is that I have an uncanny knack of being able to appreciate ‘the big picture’. Observing the workings of Havant Borough Council, spotting the next potential train-wreck and seeking to predict its passage can be in turns frustrating, absorbing, stressful but enlightening; not necessarily the healthiest of retirement hobbies. It doesn’t make for a comfortable ride but has nevertheless become something of an addiction.
Havant is probably not the only medium-sized borough in the country which makes the occasional questionable decision, but that is still no excuse for failure to learn from past mistakes. The most recent, to my mind, being the local authority’s decision to turn away guaranteed commercial business income from Amazon at Dunsbury Park while chasing its over-inflated freeport fantasy. The consequent decision to compound that error by deciding, under pretensions of anonymity, to cram the massive traffic-generator into its current location at New Lane will not end happily for Havant, the only real winners being the corporate lawyers and business rate consultants.
I could predict with a fair degree of confidence that the next opportunity for a slow-motion train-wreck will be the association of Southern Water’s threatened water recycling plant with Budds Farm and the Havant Thicket Reservoir. A smaller, though still significant, cause for concern is high on the HCS radar as we enter 2024 with the re-development proposals for Portsmouth Water’s current and former land assets north of Solent Road.
So who are these blog posts written for?
Well if you’ve read this far, then the answer could be ‘you’. Perhaps you’re a reader who cares about the past and future history of Havant, a town with such an ideal geographical context that it really deserves better. Having been brought up in the fifties as part of a car-less Portsmouth family, occasional expeditions by bicycle, bus or train left an early impression that Havant and Petersfield vied with each other for the title of the dullest market town on the London railway line.
It was the Romans, who first spotted Hamafunta’s potential before betting their future expansion on Chichester and Portchester, the latter giving rise to the eventual development of Portsmouth. As far as I’m aware, they didn’t spend too much time at Petersfield. However, despite Havant’s clear advantage, two fine harbours and the additional benefit of the south coast railway network, it was Petersfield that first captured the attention of the aspirational London commuter.
Havant instead carved out a specialist manufacturing niche based around the ‘green field’ employment site in New Lane and the neighbouring housing development of West Leigh. From 1965 through to 1985, employment was high and products from the town’s manufacturing and development plants, including state-of-the-art electrical, electronic and marine engineering companies, were to be found across the globe.
And then we blew it.
It would be satisfying if the decision makers in authority read the HCS website posts, took the time to understand and debate the points in them, and where appropriate, demonstrated that understanding through their actions. There are many residents across the borough who take the time to raise comments on planning applications and who are sick and tired of being ignored. We at HCS applaud their persistence, however it often seems that the appointment of ineffective planning committees, made up of myopic thinkers and often chaired by the least competent, enable deeply-flawed planning applications to be nodded through with neither intelligent challenge nor consideration of their wider impact.
Well-intentioned representatives of the public continue to deliver brief, time-constrained deputations, restricted to 750 words and with no opportunity to join the debate. In the case of a commercial development applications, the applicant or their agent is offered the full spectrum of input media through the planning officer’s report, gaining the upper hand by wielding the threat of the cost of a planning appeal. Concerned public representative simply have to sit, gagged, through what passes for debate, watching the train get inescapably closer to the buffers. Effective challenge and real debate is sadly left for the residential or small business planning applicant, who rarely represent any threat of an appeal.
To be fair, we should acknowledge that on some occasions the council’s officers, freed from any real threat of retaliation, absolutely nail the process, actions for which we should and do salute them.
The question my trusty reviewer held back on was the easiest to dismiss. That question was “How many people are actually going to ‘get it’ and do anything about it?”
The sad answer is ‘very few’, ‘not enough’, and probably ‘not the ones who can influence and change anything’.
However, thanks to the internet and the persistence of the search engines, it may well be that one day, people ask questions about Havant and an AI ‘bot’ will enrich its response by sourcing facts and content from the HCS website.
If you don’t believe that, trust me – it’s already happened.
Happy New Year!
Bob Comlay
31 December, 2023
Havant Civic Society 