I had a letter from a resident this week that I thought provided such an excellent precis of this Doric/Mace/ToryVale/WestWay situation, that I asked them if I could publish their letter here. They said yes, but declined attribution.

Dear Cllr Hallett

I moved to Elm’s Rise with my partner three years ago. It’s a lovely place to live. I’ve found the politics of the place and the Council’s apparent priorities to be, shall we say, rather surprising after living in {snip}. Your communications have been tremendously helpful to my awareness of the issues we face living here.

Sadly, but inevitably, I will now rant on about Doric for a little bit!

Thanks for the update about the revisions to the West Way centre application, for posting Mace’s patronising and self-important response to a constituent on your blog and for the work you are putting in to try and get some sense around this deeply unfortunate scheme. I’ve found the behaviour of the developers absolutely jaw-dropping in its unprofessionalism and contempt for both the local community and sensible planning. Sadly I’ve found it impossible to work out whether the failings of this scheme are due to negligence on the part of the DC or the hubris of inexperienced developers. A good measure of both I suspect.

Looking briefly at some of the documentation in the revised plans a couple of things struck me. In their EA they discounted the refurbishment of the existing centre because a large supermarket would impact the current centre. Now they provide a Southampton University/Tesco report that supports large supermarkets as beneficial to current centres, I think to justify their traffic projections, but ironically evidence for exploring the popular option that they discounted in their EA.

Then they state in the response to the Design Review that the quantum of uses is necessary because of the complexity and scale of the project, thus implicitly refuting objections to scale or evidence of need; a complexity and scale which by all accounts has been pushed only by themselves.

And they’ve provided the planning ruling on the massive out of town development at Rushden Lakes. So I guess in some way at least they acknowledge what this has never been about the redevelopment of a local centre.

So frustrating.

 

Throughout today, I’ll be downloading all the Doric docs for this current amendment into a Dropbox folder.

If you use Dropbox, and would like access to these drawings and docs, send me the email you use for Dropbox and I’ll share the folder with you.

They just came up on the website this morning, and are still undergoing checking and re-organisation. You can see them here in the Amendments folder: http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/java/support/Main.jsp?MODULE=ApplicationDetails&REF=P13/V2733/FUL

I think one good place to start is with the Design & Access Statement Addendum here: http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/java/support/dynamic_serve.jsp?ID=328297503&CODE=05CE7BB6C9CA1A96204DEF38D05F51BA

Although there are typos and some errors of fact (the Design Panel was on 2 June 14, not 18 June 14 as this doc states), hopefully they aren’t anything material. Further study will show if there are important errors. If you find glaring errors that might bear on this planning decision, bring them to the attention of Vale officer, or to West Way Concern, who will be sure it’s handled.

But this doc lists all the changes, and plots them on a site map. It also explains the reasons for the changes.

Deadline for comments is officially 29 Sept, but there is some leniency in this. So plan for that date, and don’t worry too much if you go over by a few days.

Here’s a letter from Mace, sent in response to a letter from Jill Cottee and Mike Meldrum, residents in North Hinksey parish.

This is posted with permission of both the writer and the recipeints.

Mace letter 15 Jul 2014

I just spoke to Stuart Walker, our planning officer for the West Way application.

Doric/Mace’s amended plans are expected by the end of this month. Once they are received and checked, they’ll be published and then another three week consultation begins.

“Burger’s”

Timeframe is now looking like planning committee will hear this toward the end of October, if all goes well.

Hotel Maria Elena logged their supportive comments about the West Way Plans.

You really should read these. Seriously. Go take a look.

They are still on the Vale website for West Way planning application. I’ve downloaded them to Dropbox, because I figure as soon as someone in authority sees the content, they’ll be taken down. So this is, like, a civic duty.

From 24 July, bit.ly/1p7f3p0

From 26 July, bit.ly/1nnR7Zi

On 28 June 2014, while I was away on holiday, Doric/Mace sent out a letter to ‘stakeholders’. In it they made quite a few claims, but two in particular caught my attention as being misleading or just not true:

• They said they’d had a lengthy meeting with Doric’s design team, Vale of White Horse Planning Officers, North Hinksey and Wytham ward councillors and members of North Hinksey Parish Council.
• They said, ‘Along with local ward member Councillor Hallett, we agree that the panel process was impressive…’ and then continued with their spin on what the panel had said, making it all sound very positive.

On the first item. Yes, there was an all-day session with the Design Panel, who asked probing questions and critically commented on the design. However, I was not a participant. I was invited there to observe. Members of North Hinksey Parish Council weren’t even at the table — they were also strictly observers. Doric make it sound like we were all discussing their design! Not the case; misleading the audience.

On the second item. As far as what I thought was ‘impressive’, here is what I wrote about it (see the whole blog post here).

…Stuart Walker… asked me what I thought of the process so far. I said I was very impressed with how the panel members seemed to understand the key issues; they were very sharp. They are experienced enough to know when they are getting hype instead of facts too.

Doric made it sound like we were in agreement! Not the case; just not true.

I first replied to Ellis Cresswell, who had emailed me the letter. We’ve never met or spoken. I’ve had no reply.

I strongly object to your using my name to imply that I support your proposals in any way. I am completely against your plans. I’ve no idea what you think I may have said but I did not in any way agree with you. You imply I participated in this, and I did not; I was there strictly as an observer and not allowed to participate. Please retract the part of this statement that refers to me.

I then wrote to Simon Hillcox of Doric, who did reply, and we exchanged a few emails:

I’m not sure who this Ellis person is; we’ve not met that I recall. He certainly didn’t speak to me about using my name in your propaganda. Closer inspection of this letter shows it has your authorisation. My previous email demanded a retraction. I now want to be clearer. If I don’t see a public retraction of what you’ve said about me in this email within the next 6 hours, I’ll take further steps. I’m currently seeking advice.

I’m appalled that you would use my name to try to garner wider support for your scheme. In no way do I agree with you, nor with your plans for my community, nor with your assertion that the Design Panel thought yours was a good design. Your letter makes it sound as if I was part of the panel that you say thought you had a good design. That’s absolutely not true.

Your letter also implies that the North Hinksey Parish Council members were participating in this review. Also not true.

We were invited as observers. We did not participate.

In anticipation of your prompt reply and action.

Mr Hillcox, founder of Doric, would not retract. I told him the most upsetting thing was that I couldn’t tell who he had sent this letter of lies to, so I had no way to contact the same people to correct what had been said about me. I felt he had sullied my reputation, especially considering all the work I have done in this community to fight this Doric deal.

The action I decided to take was to publish all this. Half truths intended to mislead, and outright lies if there is little danger of libel suits. Total lack of integrity. Complete self interest. And not a word of apology or correction.

I attended this panel on 3 Jun 14 (as an observer), and they had a lot more to say at the meeting than they’ve put in their official report.

You can read it and see what you think. Essentially, I think they’ve said the plans should be better.

Here’s a link to my folder on Dropbox, where you can download the report: http://bit.ly/1p2YEUC

Here are the answers to the questions we submitted to the Vale CEO, David Buckle. I was about to say these are from him, then I noticed his file name is MB WWCC Questions. So I think these are from Cllr Matthew Barber, to me, via David Buckle. And now to you.

This is a link to my Dropbox folder where you can read or download the document:

http://bit.ly/1uOWG7w