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Havant Town Centre – A renewed focus on Placemaking
Havant Civic Society believes Placemaking to have an important role in developing Havant Town Centre into a thriving destination to visit, work and to which residents can have pride in their town. Placemaking can be viewed and defined as a collaborative, multi-stakeholder process that goes beyond urban design and planning, to foster local identity, community, and economic vitality. Effective…
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New Town Centre Business Group Established
A recent meeting held at St Faith’s Church with town centre businesses, agreed to Havant Civic Society establishing the group within its Placemaking and Public Realm role. The Civic Society has an effective working relationship with Havant Borough Council and the general public, as well as other organisations, and has a credible reputation to co-ordinate…
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Havant Banking Hub Announcement
Following the recent closure of the Lloyds and Halifax branches in Havant precinct, a Banking Hub has recently been announced (HBC website 19 February ). I am surprised and delighted about this as I had been told by two Lloyds Bank employees (from very different parts of the company) that there will not be a…
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A new nail bar is coming to West Street
In this week’s planning list, the former charity shop on the western side of the former NatWest bank in West Street brings further competition to the local nail bar market market. Surely a good thing? Want to look inside, here’s the floor plan. If you want to raise a comment on this planning application by…
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Park Road North – A Bridge Too Far?
Update – 29 November Given by the number of hits this post has already had from social media, and the typical TL;DR reaction, blaming ‘the council’, most people don’t have the time to get beyond the first photograph, missing the bigger picture. Havant Borough Council has no obvious responsibility here. The bridge itself – including…
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Waterlooville – 2, Havant – 0
Following on from our cub reporter’s last post, she’s been digging a little deeper and come up with this bizarre result. Lloyds Banking Group are closing both Havant branches in January 2026, but keeping both Waterlooville branches open! For a bank who only a few weeks ago were trumpeting the news that their two branded…
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Counting down the weeks to the last bank in town
Since our cub reporter’s original post concerning local banking in August 2024, there have been quite a few updates . . . The most significant is that BOTH the Lloyds Bank and the Halifax in Havant are set to close in January 2026. It is ironic that a poster in the Lloyds branch advertises that…
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Heritage Open Days – Looking back on Havant 2025
It has been a busy week. Havant Civic Society has been supporting the Heritage Open Days’ events; there was a wide-ranging programme in the Havant area this year. Perhaps you noticed the big pink banners near the railway station and around town? All the events are free, open to all, and advertised on the Heritage…
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Heritage Open Days – Havant now firmly on the map
In 1985 the Council of Europe set up European Heritage Days, to raise awareness and appreciation for Europe’s cultural heritage, and the need for its care and protection. Today, 50 countries take part, each running it in their own way to highlight the dazzling diversity of Europe’s heritage, and our intercultural links. Heritage Open Days (HODs) is…
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24 flats above the Park Road South / West Street shops
One notable entry in this week’s planning list is the long-anticipated redevelopment of the West Street / Park Road South corner plot. Sold earlier this year for £2,500,000, you might have spotted our reference to it in this post from March. What is being proposed in the current planning application is rather less ambitious than…
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St Faith’s heritage – A tale in two postcards
Here at HCS we take on many research challenges and it was a delight to have one that, for once, didn’t involve the murky world of local planning. Over the bank holiday weekend, we received an email from a gentleman who’d ‘never been to Havant but had a dip in the sea at Southsea during…
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New planning application puts Burger King back on the map
This week’s planning list contains a seemingly innocuous planning application submitted by BKUK Group Limited, applying for an extension of trading hours to allow for 24 hour operation of its drive in/collection operation at Burger King in Park Road South. The company is also requesting that the operating hours for its restaurant be shifted earlier…
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Easter Bank Holiday fun in Havant town centre
An excellent show put on by Havant Borough Council in collaboration with the Port Solent Car Meet on Easter bank holiday Monday in the town centre. Plenty of lovingly-polished metal on show for kids of all ages, and an Easter egg hunt with 150 chocolate eggs just waiting to be found. Check out the pictures…
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Where has the money gone . . . and where can I get some?
In the temporary absence of the normal ‘writer of rants’ on this site, our Cub Reporter has delivered this quick (?) round-up of the banking establishments left in Havant and why cash is important: Barclays – The branch in East Street closed in August 2022. There is now a ‘presence’ in the Library in the…
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Havant’s charity shop trail
It’s a frequent grumble that nowadays High Streets are all charity outlets and coffee shops. It is sad that there aren’t the shops that existed ten or fifteen years ago, but Havant is lucky that most of its shop units are occupied. The charity shops are bringing in a good income for their causes, which…
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Regeneration – Meridian Centre reimagined for 2028
As we showed back in April, the council are continuing to invest in the services of Fabrik, despite the failure of the two Levelling Up Fund bids totalling over £30M on which the two organisations collaborated. However, taking a positive view, times have moved on since April and HBC’s new executive team have assembled a…
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South Street – Twittens Way development plans
An interesting new development project has been loaded to the HBC planning system for the land formerly associated with Pearce Motors and a number of other small local South Street businesses. If you can’t quite place the site, the animation below might help: The planning application is for the part demolition and part redevelopment of…
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Christmas Shopping in Havant
(Contributed by a non-driving Portsmouth resident who now regularly shops in Havant by choice, thanks to the excellent rail and bus links.) What makes Havant different? Well, Havant never had any large department stores – those once-glittering shopping palaces (especially at Christmas time) are now standing sad and empty in larger nearby shopping areas such…
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Havant – All you need is love
The lyrics of Lennon and McCartney’s famous song have never been more apposite than what is required to make Havant a thriving historic town it justifiably is, now as in the past. I daily walk around Havant town centre because I live within this busy, vibrant community meeting place for visitors and residents alike. Nowadays,…
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Retail in Havant – ‘A letter from Portsmouth’
With the imminent closure of their last remaining Debenhams, along with Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Topshop and Miss Selfridge, Portsmouth’s Commercial Road retail offer has all but sunk without trace. The following post has been written by a friend of HCS who lives in Southsea, a regular visitor to Havant. Worth reading and considering just…