[Updated with a full report of the meeting – 21 April 2024]
This post contains a full account of a meeting organised by the Havant Labour group to enable local residents to share their views and concerns about the operation of the Amazon DPO1 delivery station at New Lane.
Contents
Disclaimer and acknowledgements
The HCS chair and author of this post is acting as a member of the Amazon DPO1 Community Liaison Panel, a group set up by a condition of the approval for Amazon’s operations at New Lane. The residents’ representatives on the Amazon DPO1 Community Liaison Panel are indebted to Havant Labour for their assistance in publicising the session, and to Havant Civic Society for taking the initiative to deploy the current complaint reporting website page. In the continued absence of an HBC or Amazon solution, the HCS ‘Complaints page’ provides the only platform to the wider community for the collection of concerns and the consolidation of community views. Since the increased vehicle traffic is generated by unbranded vans and private car deliveries, the insidious impact on the town and the population is currently unmeasurable.
Mr. Comlay is indebted to Ian, Emma and Marcia, the other three resident members of the Amazon DPO1 CLP for their efforts in bringing the issues of the residents to the attention of the panel. In particular, to Ian for help in printing and distributing the initial leaflets advertising the HCS ‘Complaints’ web page to neighbours.
Pass the message on – download and print the detail here, or share this link with local friends and neighbours.
Introduction
The meeting was attended by around forty local residents, and a number of council candidates from the three main political parties. Input from the audience was in the main lively and constructive, though at times the audience found the heckling by the self-appointed chair of the ‘Amazon Planning Committee Reunion Group’ was rude and completely unnecessary. It was, after all, a meeting intended for residents to share their views. They would have been better served by following the Labour group’s and the Bedhampton Liberal Democrat’s approach of listening, learning and making informed contributions. More on this important point later.
The presentation
Mr. Comlay presented slides summarising the background to the development of the Amazon DPO1 facility in New Lane and the problems experienced by local residents resulting from its operation. The scope of the presentation was extremely broad and with the chair’s emphasis on using the time to maximise the airing of residents’ input, the slides were pitched at a very high level. They can be viewed, along with further annotations, at the bottom of this post.
The slide presentation included a high level summary of key factors associated with Amazon logistics which should have been taken into account at the pre-planning stage, but which were which kept from public and Planning Committee scrutiny by the decision to withhold the name of the intended occupant. A summary of supporting evidence from development sites under the jurisdiction of six other local planning authorities was shown.
The current operational model for these Amazon delivery stations was summarised, demonstrating the company’s reliance on third-party haulage and van delivery companies, supplemented by private gig-economy van and car owner/drivers, for all traffic in to and out of the New Lane site. The currently unused multi-storey van storage building is expected to become operational once the UK-wide delivery station network nears completion, giving rise to significant increases in traffic generation as the Amazon Shipping business expands. Amazon’s logistics-on-demand contract with B&Q was cited as an example.
Mr. Comlay summarised the setting and variation of four significant planning conditions, each of which are now, finally, the subject of an enforcement investigation by HBC Planning Services, together with the Operational Management Plan which provides the essential reference baseline. Mr. Comlay’s view that this document is not, and never has been, fit for purpose is widely acknowledged. (The need for enforcement action had been initially raised to HBC by HCS before site demolition began, and given lack of action, was escalated to the Chief Executive and the current Leader of the Council in January 2023 before the site began operations. The increasingly urgent need for enforcement action had been actioned to Councillor Stone during the Community Liaison Panel meeting at Amazon on 22 January.)
Mr. Comlay concluded by saying that, despite the unacceptable delay, straightforward and cost-effective options for achievable enforcement still exist and that he would not comment further until he has seen the output of the currently ongoing internal HBC enforcement investigation. His offer to work with this investigation has been declined.
The discussion
As expected, the concerns highlighted in ten examples from the presentation were confirmed, but with additional supporting information.
Much aggravation is caused by van drivers using local residential streets to unload and re-organise their cargo or waiting within a few minutes’ drive of the delivery centre to be called in for a scheduled load or to collect a short-notice Flex delivery at the best pay rate. Parking is already difficult enough without this, and many residents of all ages find this loitering behaviour intimidating and distressing, particularly given that many of the drivers concerned are clearly not from the local area with some claiming not to understand English.
Aggressive and antisocial driving behaviour by van drivers, often in intimidating waves of multiple vans cause distress. With the vast majority of the UK’s licenced drivers having scant understanding of the recent changes in priority for pedestrians and cyclists, it’s not surprising that residents are concerned about these delivery drivers – many of whom are working under sometimes extreme time pressure and prone to exceeding speed limits and exploiting local residential rat-runs.
Pedestrians attempting to cross Crossland Drive or New Lane during times when waves of vans are incoming or outgoing feel that they’re taking their lives into their own hands. The same is true of local motorists trying to negotiate the un-signalled junction of Crossland Drive and New Lane. One day, there is going to be a serious road traffic accident at which point, Havant Borough Council and Hampshire County Council Highways are going to have serious questions to answer.
Are Amazon keeping to the requirement to monitor their traffic movements? If not, why not?
The increase in traffic volume and noise, especially overnight HGV traffic and waves of delivery vans and otherwise unidentifiable private cars coming to and out from the site at all hours is causing havoc with the road surfaces and harming the well-being of residents.
Structural damage, which residents of Crossland Drive believe is attributable to the vibration from the significant increase in traffic since Amazon’s occupation, must be investigated by the council with independent building surveys. It was significant that complaints on these points have been received from long-standing residents, several with greater than fifty years of occupation, one even stating seventy-one years.
At one point, Councillor Stone asked to take the floor. He reinforced the importance of having Amazon located in the borough, both for employment and for the financial benefit of business rate income. This was perhaps an unwise point to make given the delay of more than a year in getting a business rate valuation set by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) has been a topic of previous Havant Civic Society focus. Councillor Stone was unable to confirm whether business rate payments are now being received, a point which raised more widespread concern. He was also unable to confirm why it is that of the seven similar delivery stations identified in Mr. Comlay’s presentation, it is only the Havant site which has failed to start paying business rates in a timely manner. When asked how many local people are employed at the site, Councillor Stone was again unable to answer.
Questions were raised concerning the monitoring of air pollution from the increased traffic generation, particularly given that there are five primary or nursery-aged educational establishments and a number of NHS adult mental health facilities in the immediate neighbourhood. As well as children journeying to and from school, potentially vulnerable day-release patients from the Elmleigh adult mental health unit, within a few hundred yards of the site entrance on New Lane, are often noted walking unattended into Havant during the working day.
The impact of the increased traffic on property values, and the knock-on impact on house sales was raised. If Amazon is allowed to continue to operate without proper controls put in place by the local authorities, local residents will be looking to the council for compensation.
One resident of Crossland Drive, referring back to what must have been a pre-planning public meeting prior to the development of housing on Oak Park field, asked why there been had no prior notification of the intention to redevelop the Pfizer site. Mr. Comlay commented that the legally-required notices had been displayed outside the site in New Lane and that ‘up to 400’ homes in the local area had leaflets hand-delivered by the planning agent in January 2021. (Local residents have always queried that figure.) Councillor Crellin said that planning notices were always displayed in the public libraries in the borough. (Note: Following the meeting, a Saturday morning visit to the library in the Meridian Centre contradicted this and the librarian, after several minutes of fruitless searching, referring us to the HBC website for planning details.)
Other residents raised the point that they were unaware who their councillors are or how to contact them. (This information and more, can be found by taking the HBC Information ‘quick-links’ page on the HCS website.)
A resident commented that a similar increase in traffic is being observed in Leigh Road and asked whether HCS could include a map showing the affected streets. This is now in hand.
Reflections on the Council Candidates
There were a number of candidates observing the meeting from the three ‘traditional’ main parties. Most were respectful of the fact that the meeting had been organised, publicised and chaired by the Havant Labour group on behalf of the resident members of the Amazon DPO1 Community Liaison Panel, fronted by Mr. Comlay. Mr. Horton introduced and chaired the meeting with a light touch, leaving the detailed interaction to be handled by Mr. Comlay.
As time progressed, Councillor Munday took on the same, measured ‘head-masterly’ role that he had taken during the previous Amazon meeting in the same hall during site construction in July 2022. In his summary of his own key take-outs from the meeting, he had the good grace to admit that the efforts of the five elected Councillors on the Amazon Community Liaison Panel had perhaps not been as strong as they should have been.
The only negative and unconstructive input at the meeting came from the frequent disrespectful and confrontational interjections from Councillor Crellin, who seems to have learned nothing from her previous ill-informed engagement as the Chair of the Planning Committee which approved both Amazon planning applications. The presence alongside her of fellow Conservative Planning Committee member, Councillor Weeks, who at times seemed to be trying to side with both Councillor Crellin and the local residents, together with former Liberal Democrat Councillor Lowe who reprised her role on the same Planning Committee session by remaining silent.
Note: Readers wishing to see and hear more of Councillor Crellin’s extraordinary approach to ‘meeting etiquette’ can review the HCS report of the Planning Committee of 3 February 2022 where they can read the summary extracts and listen to the key highlights, or even watch and listen to the entire meeting, by taking this link to the HCS report.
After two years of disruption from demolition, development and unconstrained delivery operations, not to mention many tens of millions of pounds of expenditure, it makes for sobering reading.
The final slide of the presentation didn’t see full exposure given the ticking of the clock. Its three core messages are worth noting:
- Havant Borough Council should have actively helped Amazon present the win-win case to Portsmouth City Council for the original development proposal at Dunsbury Park.
- The New Lane site should never have been selected. It is a waste of sustainable high-tech manufacturing space which would have provided high quality employment for the area.
- Havant Borough Council’s lack of political balance has caused poor decision making, weak governance and a failure to challenge proposed developments.
The meeting slides
Annotations to slides
(To be added)
Epilogue
Councillor Stone sent Mr. Comlay an email at 2:11am the morning after the meeting. In line with his request, the note is passed on, below:
