A planning application like this wouldn’t normally generate much interest. However since this one is fronted by the same planning agent as the Amazon development in New Lane, it’s caught our attention. When the planning application for 8 Downley Road is published, we’ll be looking closely at the supporting documentation for signs that lessons from that deeply-troubled planning application have been learnt.
The first time that Fellows Planning hand-delivered leaflets in and around New Lane was in January 2021, advertising a proposal for a ‘last mile delivery operation’ on the old Pfizer site at 32 New Lane. A few months later, the agent sat alongside the CEO of Kingsbridge Estates and one of Amazon’s favoured transport consultants, selling their still-anonymous client’s proposal to the Planning Committee, knowing full well that the ‘intended occupier’ was Amazon and that the planned operation would be its largest delivery station in the south of England.
The Havant Borough Council case officer had rightly deferred to Hampshire County Council Highways for detailed analysis of the transport documentation but the HCC Highways ‘Transport Planner’ completely misjudged the task. With no understanding of the local Havant road network and clearly no appreciation of the Amazon logistics model, the HCC Highway’s analysis fell well short of the standard which HBC should have expected. In fact the only detailed challenges to the manifest inadequacies of the supporting documentation were raised by HCS and the local New Lane residents, but were dismissed out of hand by the Planning Committee.
Turning to Downley Road, now that the same planning agent has delivered flyers to a few selected doors near the former Dunham Bush site in Downley Road, here’s what we know so far.
On the face of it, the proposal looks straightforward and simple, a modern shed reusing the site of one of the New Lane estate’s longest-established former employers.
The proposed elevations are nothing special, a cookie-cutter set of functional sheds on the lines of all the others appearing around the borough. Havant was once notable for the quality and diversity of its twentieth century industrial architecture, the finest example of which is right now fast disappearing under the wrecking ball at Langstone. The former Colt HQ building at the northern gateway to the New Lane estate was, to some, a brutalist gem.
However, change is inevitable and what these new buildings lack in character will, we hope, be compensated for by the quality of the local employment they provide. The previous development fronted by Fellows Planning brought record levels of unmanageable traffic generation to the New Lane estate, with low levels of high quality jobs for local residents. We sincerely hope that lessons have been learned and that more complete and professional planning documentation will be published for the 8 Downley Road proposal.
To find out more, click the image below to open the ‘Public Consultation’ website, read through the detail and note that there’s a form included for you to fill in your initial comments. You had until midnight on Monday 17 June to make your comments which is, of course, too late!
Confused? Well the truth of the matter is that you don’t normally hear about planning applications until they’ve been ‘validated’ and published. Read on below the image.
While the planning application for 8 Downley Road has yet to be formally submitted and published, a Havant Borough Council case officer will have been hard at work on this for some time, working with Fellows Planning and its clients, its transport consultant and a Hampshire County Council Highways transport planning officer. With all the right boxes now ticked and the first public leaflets distributed, that just leaves the final box which indicates that the planning application has been ‘validated’.
In planning terms, that simply means that all the boxes have been ticked to show that the necessary pieces of documentation and information have been provided. The problem is that once a planning application has been deemed ‘valid’, the clock starts ticking on the quasi-legal planning process, the developer has the upper hand and the application proceeds towards its almost inevitable approval via a delegated decision.
HCS will be keeping a close eye on this one and unless the supporting employment and transport documentation demonstrates that HBC and HCC Highways have performed an acceptable level of scrutiny, we’ll be reserving our right to have the application called into the Planning Committee for proper scrutiny.
Havant Civic Society 