Hart Local Plan Regulation 19 consultation: Missed opportunity to regenerate urban centres
This is the fourth part of our submission to the Hart Local Plan Regulation 19 consultation. This article explains how we are missing the opportunity to regenerate our urban centres and why Policies Policies ED4, 5 and 6 (and SS3) need to be removed for the time being until we come up with a proper regeneration strategy. The process for making a submission is as follows:
- Go to the Hart Local Plan Consultation page of the Council website
- From the Hart website, download and complete Response Form Part A (Personal Details). A copy can be downloaded here.
- Also download and complete the Response Form Part B (Your Representations), a separate Part B is required for each representation you wish to make. A copy can be downloaded here.
- Make sure you include words of this form in each representation. Policy [X] is not sound because it is not [positively prepared, justified, effective or consistent with national policy] (delete as appropriate).
- Once you have filled in Part A and Part B, please email them to [email protected] or post them to Planning Policy Team, Hart District Council, Harlington Way, Fleet, Hampshire, GU51 4AE.
Hart Local Plan Regulation 19 Consultation: MIssed regeneration opportunity
Fleet housing density versus towns of similar size
The retail offer in Fleet is poor, the cultural facilities (e.g. Harlington Centre) are outdated and there is no proper cinema. We might as well employ botanists to identify the new species of tumbleweed appearing in the Hart Shopping Centre.
Fleet Health score versus benchmarks
However, Fleet has the highest average earnings per person of comparative towns by quite a large margin (e.g.: 9% more than Camberley). High earnings should give Fleet a significant advantage over the comparison towns.
Fleet earnings versus competitors
The Local Plan fails to take advantage of the opportunity to modernise Hart’s urban centres and protect Hart’s countryside.
We believe that the Local Plan should be centred on the proposition that Fleet and other urban centres will be re-generated. With Hart District Council’s full and active support, a plan based on urban regeneration would achieve the following benefits:
- An ambitious Hart Urban Re-generation Project (HURP) would attract private investment and thus be affordable
- Private investment would allow for Hart’s infrastructure to be upgraded in line with the urban re-generation
- Good urban design principles would achieve a higher population density in the urban centres while at the same time providing an improved ‘sense of place’ and making the urban centres more desirable places to live.
A similar approach could be adopted in Yateley to provide a proper retail-led centre and improvements could be made to Blackwater. The requirement for additional retail facilities in Hook, identified in the Reg 18 Local Plan could also be met.
Hart did have a plan to conduct a brownfield study (We Heart Hart helped to write the terms of reference) to evaluate the ‘art of the possible’ in our urban centres. This project has not delivered.
In addition, Yateley lacks a defined centre, Blackwater is indistinct and Hook lacks good quality restaurants and shopping facilities.
The council should be setting out a bold plan to improve the retail, cultural and recreational amenities in the district. We should also develop plans for a theatre and cinema in Fleet as part of an attractive mixed-use redevelopment. There will be significant cash available from developers to fund such an ambitious plan.
Instead of creating a proper masterplan, Fleet Town Council are pursuing an ill-thought out plan for a new theatre that will leave the existing Harlington Centre to rot. This is not regeneration in any meaningful sense of the word.
Our local MP, Ranil Jaywardena, has launched a campaign to regenerate our urban centres. He said:
Looking to some of our local, district and town centres, however, it is clear to see that Fleet, Yateley and Hook are all in real need of revitalisation and regeneration. I’ve been spending time speaking to your local Councillors about this and taking a look at the work that needs to be done.
I am more convinced than ever that all three places have great potential – be that simply as shopping destinations or, with the right infrastructure improvements, as great places for our young people to get their foot on the housing ladder.
The trouble is that there is no ‘masterplan’ for any of these places. I will be raising this with Hart District Council personally – but I need your help. If you want smart new shops, some new flats for local young people to buy above them and better car parking, then act now.
The BBC has recently interviewed a number of people in Fleet about what it is like to live there. Everybody loves it, but they think there’s been too much housing and not enough infrastructure. The draft Local Plan won’t fix either of those issues, because they’re insisting on building too many houses and aren’t addressing infrastructure.
However, policies ED4, 5 and 6 effectively cast the existing centres in aspic and preclude significant redevelopment. I do not have the resources available to me to completely re-write these policies.
Remedy: Policies ED4, 5 and 6 should be removed for the time being and a proper community team put together to work with our local councillors and MP to come up with a master plan to regenerate our town centres. Policy SS3 (together with the consequent changes to SS1 already outlined) should also be removed, so that time and energy can be freed up to address the fundamental problem of our urban centres.