Welcome to the Shrewton Village Website for 2008

LOCAL VIEWS: ON THE PLANNING DEBATE:
Email your views to ShrewtonWebmaster@btconnect.com Your name, address and telephone number are required - though only your name will be published.

A Place to Call Home - by Sarah Elderkin
THE prospect of additional housing in Shrewton, and no doubt other nearby villages, is a vexed question. But it needn’t be – if we accept that such housing is inevitable, just as it has always been, and if, instead of opposing the concept wholesale, we put our energies into ensuring that whatever is built comes on terms we have a say in.

At the recent open parish council meeting on this topic, I was astonished to find myself almost exclusively in the company of people very much like me – middle-aged-galloping-to-elderly, middle-class, homeowners. Unlike myself, however, most of them seemed in favour of keeping things that way, and of protecting what to me seems a sadly insular and short-sighted exclusivity.

Do we want Shrewton to become a quaint community of middle-class geriatrics? That would surely be a dead community, one with no future. As it is, we are told the local school is being downsized to fewer classrooms. The reason is clear: the houses that do get built in Shrewton are far too expensive for local young families to afford, and the few incomers who can afford them are also able to afford, and largely choose, to send their children to private schools.

If this state of affairs continues, Shrewton within a couple of generations will have no school. The village will have no younger generation, and the school itself will go the way of other institutions that existed in my childhood and have disappeared in my lifetime:

Other institutions that came and went included a café (Mrs Budden’s) and a fish and chip shop (Ruth Bundy’s), not to mention, of course, the total of one part-time and two full-time churches – but that’s another issue.

Londis (the old Clifford’s) and Bridge Garage do an admirable and valued job of providing many of these services today – but probably when we think about housing, we are thinking as much about the ‘character’ of the village as about convenience and availability, and there is no doubt that the loss of some of these institutions and the people who ran and used them also led to the loss of a certain ‘character’. We loved and lost them. They were there and they are no longer.

The point is that there is no such thing as a defining moment in any community’s character or history. Change is permanent and unstoppable.

I happen to have been born into a family that has lived in Shrewton for generations. My great-grandparents and their children lived in cottages that stood roughly where Mrs Daphne Affleck lives today. The view from their ‘idyllic’ rose-wreathed front doors was up the hillside and across peaceful summer fields of buttercups and daisies, or over the deeply drifted snow of the old, harsh winters.

I wonder what they felt when the government in the early 1950s decided to build – not 50 yards from their front doors and completely overshadowing their homes – the council houses that were to form the Furlong Way estate? I can’t imagine they were happy about it, notwithstanding the fact that a number of their descendants would be beneficiaries of this post-war building boom, my own family included.

And then I remember Meadway being built. And Highfield Rise. When these small private estates were planned, local people, in just the same way, objected to them and to all the “strangers” moving into the village. Now these “strangers” have been woven into the village’s eternal fabric and have perhaps in turn also become objectors.

And so it goes on, and so it always will. Communities, like language, are always dynamic, never static. People as individuals might – and do – resist change, but change comes anyway. The challenge, then, for those who care about the wider dimensions of history, is perhaps to think unselfishly about the way change can be influenced.

The future, by definition, depends on the youth. What we need more than anything in this village is affordable housing for young people, many of whom have reasons of history and heritage to want to be here, and to raise families here, and to keep this village thriving. In today’s alienated and fractured society, that kind of continuity is surely desirable and to be encouraged.

What we don’t need are hundreds of houses in one or two locations on the village outskirts, destined to become sink estates.

At the parish meeting I attended, we were told, to gasps of horror, that planners had identified at least 15 sites around the village where housing development would be possible. These had been identified in accordance with the government diktat that South Wiltshire must accommodate 12,000 new houses within the next 18 years. We don’t know yet how many of these houses must come to Shrewton but mathematics and realities offer a rough idea, and the planners have produced a document that suggests several dozen “preferred options”.

This document is presented in the honeyed language of hearts and flowers, promoting the government’s self-styled caring approach to “sustainability” and the “infrastructure” and the “will of the community” and so on.

No one should be fooled by this. It is the business of governments to get their programmes through, and they do this by all means possible within the law. Lulling people into a false sense of security is frequently part of the process.

We shouldn’t be gratuitously suspicious but we need to ask some serious questions and insist on complete answers. We should be asking, for example, what “sustainability” means in this context. Are there objective, measurable criteria for determining this “sustainability”? If so, what are these criteria? How were they defined?

When it comes to infrastructure – roads (and, importantly, parking), power and sewerage – what will the government’s role and responsibility be? What burden will fall on local authorities, and at what expense to whom? What are the plans for solving existing village problems concerning, for example, sewage disposal?

If we met the planners halfway, as willing co-operators, perhaps these and other serious questions to which we need far-reaching answers might be more readily tackled.

In similar vein, I suggest that it would be better for us to consider accepting and supporting (matters of sustainability and infrastructure having been satisfactorily addressed) small, socially appropriate and life-friendly building projects in conceivably ALL the 15 or so locations mentioned, rather than fighting a losing battle against the tide of inevitability and eventually having to put up with something of elephantine proportions that we definitely don’t want imposed on us.

Change will come. Government objectives must be achieved, quotas must be met. We need to decide to be a pro-active part of this – rather than being like the doomed dinosaurs of our day.

I, for one, would prefer to live in a vibrant, balanced, self-perpetuating community, where the sound of children’s voices will not soon become a curiosity.

• Sarah Elderkin (née Cruse) is a former deputy editor of the Salisbury Journal

Dear Sir/Madam,

I would like to voice my concern to the proposed planning applications for the new housing development in Shrewton. It is with shock that I found out about the proposals, from a poster on a land post while out walking my dog. As a resident of Shrewton I was amazed that I had not heard of this application previously. I have not received any information in the post regarding this application, as stated on your web site and am shocked at how short the period is for comments. I am particularly concerned about application no. 149- land west of The Butts and areas surrounding The Hollow. Would there be any provision to compensate those home owners that have purchased their properties at an inflated price due to their proximity of the surrounding farmland? I would also like to express my concern as the access to these houses from the very narrow roads, are there any plans to improve the local access routes? Are there also any plans to increase the local infrastructure to cope with the increase of population?

I look forward to your reply,
Mrs G Drennan

Sir,
I’ve only been in the village 9 months and already I’ve felt cause to email you for a second time. This time my email is about the proposed planning for additional houses in Shrewton. Probably not so eloquently put as Mrs Elderkin but my views are below nonetheless.

Having randomly received the letter about the proposed sites, with very limited time to respond, my immediate reaction was that of horror. After all I moved to Shrewton to get away from sprawling suburbs and mass builds to sample village life, a goal I had always set myself since I got that elusive first step on to the property ladder. I instantly went to the planning web site and was further dismayed in the chosen locations. I admit to having the “not in my back garden” mentality and being somewhat selfish in that the ones that concerned me the greatest were plots 150, 151, 152 and 077, since I would virtually be bordering on these plots and they will almost certainly alter my view. I choose the word alter because until we know what the planned build would be they may or may not ruin the view I enjoy of the surrounding fields

My wife (then girlfriend) and I bought our first house as a new build in the infamous Bradley Stoke near Bristol in early 2000 some 10 to 15 years after the housing market crash that earned it the name Sadly Broke. I soon moved to Amesbury after transferring to Boscombe Down with the MoD and bought another new build with my wife (still my girlfriend at the time) at Butterfield Down who was working up at the hospital doing her GP training at the time. We lived there for 4 or 5 years, until our expanding family required an expanding mortgage and hence larger house. As an aside we chose Shrewton as the perfect location, easy access to work, my wife’s GP practice, schools and nurseries and most important of all in a nice friendly village location.

I have no doubt that at both the estates that my new build houses were in caused no end of objections from the local populace at the time of their development. I admit they were both good first and second homes and although at the time we struggled to buy them as our careers progressed this became much more financially manageable. An advantage of affordable housing, one might say. However, life on these estates were not without their problems.

At Bradley Stoke I understand that the planners (government maybe?) stipulated that for every certain number of houses an amenity such as a school, shop complex or doctors surgery had to be built. However, the builders invariably managed to find a loop hole to avoid building them. As a result there was a complete lack of amenities resulting in massive traffic jams come rush hour during the week as everyone vacated the area to go to work in places where there were amenities and offices. Weekends were no better as the population set off on shopping trips to get to a mall or the high street in Bristol. Further, there was a large antisocial behaviour problem with gangs of teenage kids hanging around in large intimidating groups, drinking and heckling passers by. Each Monday morning the council moves in en-masse to clean up broken bottles, bus shelters, phone boxes and public areas.

In Butterfield Down, there was a stipulation that a number of houses had to be made available for social housing – what is the distinction between social and affordable housing? I believe this is quite common and the figure is now around 40% of the total number of houses built. Whilst the majority of the people who lived in these houses were decent folk trying to get on with their life there was a small minority who made life miserable for those around them. Our front street was regularly vandalised by gangs of kids (maybe not all from social housing admittedly!), there wasn’t a week went by where the local community support officer didn’t knock on our door asking for information about a recent act of vandalism or assault. Cars were vandalised, and I regularly had to remove broken bottles from under the wheels so that my tires were not ripped to shreds and my three year old son didn’t pick one up and hurt himself. Frankly I was glad to move to Shrewton where I and my family thought we would be rid of this. Unfortunately, these cases although by a very small minority of people, are the ones that stick in the mind

Adrian Osborne

John Dayes

Sir,

I have already tendered my opinion to the planning office, but after reading Shrewton's website I felt I needed to share my views.

I was born and bought up on a smallholding in Codford. Most of you will know it's "just over the hill". In the 50s and 60s there was a variety of shops, now there is a garage which also houses the Post Office, foodstuff and papers.

When I met and married my husband (in the 70s) I moved to Salisbury, where he lived and OUR jobs were. (so this is no new problem.) I'd always felt I had missed out, so I wanted our children to have the convenience of all the amenities. This they had, but in the 14 years we lived in our first home we only ever knew other 'school' parents. Our neighbours were either out to work full time (not yet starting a family) or downsizing once their children had left home, again, out to work.

Our next move was to the Devizes Road area, where we again lived for 14 years (this is now late 80s). During these years the local shops closed. St. Paul's roundabout was where our local "convenient store" was. The Post Office was in the city centre, as was the Doctor's, where you needed an appointment 2 weeks prior to your illness, then when you were ill you had to pick up your prescription, take it to a pharmacy and then 48 hours later, pick it up!

The closest garage was in Wilton Road, again hardly convenient. Whether you travelled by bus or car the journey into the city usually took 20 minutes because of traffic. Again our neighbours either had babies or were retired, which meant a large age difference.

I'd always said that once our children were grown I wanted to move back to the countryside. With my husband driving to the other side of Devizes, (for his job) and my parents still in Codford, we thought Shrewton would be ideal. We moved in 2001.

We feel so lucky to live here. In fact our son and his family followed us here a few years later. The Doctor is 5 minutes away, has it's own pharmacy, plus you can have a telephone appointment in an emergency. The great garage encourages local people to use it's services (petrol, papers, M.O.T's) and of course prompt car repairs. The Post Office has closed but is now housed under 'Kingsley's roof'. As for Kingsley's, well we couldn't believe our eyes. It's like the Tardis. There is so much choice and if he hasn't got it, he will try to get it (they even do some deliveries).

I've had mobility problems for at least 30 years and my neighbour NOW is the only one I've ever had to offer help (she is over 70!) By chatting to people I've found a lot who knew my family when they were haulage contractors, they'd either worked in farming or had owned small holdings. There is also the younger generation, who I have met while either taking or picking up my grandson to nursery or my granddaughter to school. If nobody talks you're obviously sending out the wrong signals!

Do you realise how lucky you are to live in Shrewton?

We now have no cars being vandalised, aerials being bent, traffic cones or rubbish on top of cars and no nails scattered all over a main road, just for fun! Hanging Baskets and summer pots would go missing overnight and it wasn't unknown for nice shrubs to disappear! Milk would also vanish if you weren't quick enough to get it in of a morning!

We have never regretted moving here, life is so much calmer and easier, take our word for it , we've seen both sides of the coin! The village is also loaded with services being offered, (they may not be shops) but you only need to look in the Arrowhead for help.

If I want, I can join clubs which include, gardening, drama, bell ringing, band music, sports, W.I., dancing, singing or the churches. When I'm wise enough I might even be allowed to join the 'over 60's club'.

Yours Sincerely,
Derek and Angela Hammond,

Sarah Elderkin’s “A Place to Call Home” postulates that, because planning change is inevitable, we should seek to channel and shape it to our own liking. In other words we should embrace “good change” and fight “bad change”. On the face of it, this is a perfectly reasonable strategy. However, when the storm of the 15 possible sites has passed and only the truly viable sites remain, the real debate begins about what constitutes “good” and “bad” change for a village like Shrewton – and who defines them.

In my view, the idea of using new developments to return Shrewton to some golden age, when the village population was a balanced cross-section of ages and types is an illusory one.

Why did all those shops and facilities die in the village? In most cases it was because they could not compete with the larger shops and facilities in nearby towns. Whilst they had a captive audience they were viable. However, once car ownership became the norm, people started shopping and spending leisure time in Amesbury, Salisbury or Devizes and these village facilities gradually withered away. This had everything to do with mobility, and very little to do with housing or village demographics.

Many villages – and Shrewton is not at all exceptional in this – now attract a disproportionate number of older residents. Again, I think that this has much less to do with housing availability than that; actually, younger people simply don’t WANT to live in villages. Given the choice, they prefer the “life” and bustle of towns and cities. Okay, that is a gross generalisation, but I think it holds true for the majority of young people. If it were not true, why would enterprising landlords not have bought up these larger village houses that young people cannot afford, and converted them into flats for rent? Flat conversions in towns and cities across the land are chock full of young people, so why not in villages? Simple answer, young people really don’t want to live in villages in any significant number.

For young families I think it is a similar story, though for different reasons. Young families are typically financially very stretched. Living in a village, where there is no local employment, usually entails the need for at least one, or maybe two cars (if both parents are working). Having to haul the kids several times a week to the nearest town to cater for their hobbies or interests is also not ideal. So, although the idea of bringing up the kids in an idyllic village setting is an attractive proposition, it’s also an expensive one when compared to living in a town or city with everything on the doorstep and jobs just up the road. The only way to fix this is to make villages into small towns, something few village residents want.

I think that, for the reasons I describe above, if we rolled with the punches and allowed lots of smaller homes or flats to be built around Shrewton, within a short time these very same homes would be full of older or retired single people and not young people or young families.

Sarah very eloquently points out that change is something that happens whether we want it or not. I would suggest that villages like Shrewton having become what the Americans call an “age ghetto” is just as much the product of changes in society as the other changes which she chronicles in her piece. Trying to reverse such changes on a local level is a doomed enterprise.

So, “bad change” should be resisted and “good change” embraced. But who decides what is good and what is bad? Leaving it to the planning authority is probably unwise. Let’s not forget that this is the same planning authority who allowed the Churchfields industrial estate in Salisbury to be built without any proper access road. The same authority that has consistently failed to implement any effective solution to the Airman’s Cross death-trap. This is the same planning authority that allowed the development of the Bourne Way retail park straddling the single-lane A36 trunk road in Salisbury, with resulting traffic chaos – and so on. The past record does not inspire great confidence.

Let’s not be meek in responding to the possibility of inappropriate developments in our village. Let’s make it very clear how we feel, whilst at the same time raising genuine unemotional pragmatic objections to the sites we don’t want. Let’s ensure that the clearly unsuitable sites will be discounted early on in the process. We can then try to come to some consensus within the community about what we feel would be useful and appropriate additions to the village on the remaining sites, and fight for what we want and need.

Passivity is not an option. I suggest that we adopt as our motto a modified version of Edmund Burke’s famous phrase.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of rampant development is for good men to do nothing."

If you doubt the truth of this, take a drive around the new “super-sized” Amesbury.

Dear Sir,

Having been made aware of the Council's plans for housing development in our village and thus viewing the mapped areas identified under the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment, we were appalled to see the vast area put forward for eligibility for building upon. Not only would the natural beauty of the village, nestling on Salisbury Plain and surrounded by beautiful green swathes of countryside, much of which is of historical importance, be severely compromised, but the volume of traffic alone would be totally inappropriate for the village roads and would increase the already ever growing number of vehicles which use the A360, an arterial road to the south, which is already too busy and witnesses high volumes of accidents on the plain approach to the village from the Tilshead side.

The village is without doubt enhanced by the current lack of modern housing developments and is thus able to retain its rural charm, whilst still thriving as a community in its own right with doctors surgeries, butcher, convenience store and a thriving village school. The arrival of new housing and more people would serve only to place the amenities and village recreation infrastructure under severe pressure, to say little of the increased noise and an ever prominent concern regarding parking, especially outside of the primary school and the Londis store.

We would certainly request that this proposal to build is challenged and the concerns of villagers such as ourselves are taken into account. The village simply cannot support new housing!

Yours faithfully,
Sally and Nick Cook

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