Consider wider concept on town redevelopment

From the archive, first published Thursday 10th Nov 2005.

The new millennium does not seem to have added any sparkle to Devizes Town planners. We are yet again given the same old ideas on filling in open spaces with more housing and building more shops that have no requirement in Devizes without a much more radical rethink.

Are there lists of new shopkeepers wanting space in the town?

Are vehicle drivers happy with parking facilities?

Is there a need for more snack bars, cafés and restaurants?

How do you attract more shoppers? Better parking maybe?

How do you make shopping more enjoyable? Make it easier?

Why sell off valuable land for housing? We surely have more than enough cars in town.

Why build executive housing when low salary workers are needed to keep the town going and this forces them to live outside town centre thereby costing them more for travel.

Bedzed Development in London built low cost environmentally efficient housing with minimal car requirement, helping low wage earners to survive. The need in any town is to have a reliable manual workforce that can have affordable housing and easy transport to work. Does Devizes have this as a policy? I have not seen any evidence of this.

For any commercial town, shoppers are required ­ the more there are the more prosperous the town.

Why is it that Devizes, through its bad parking facilities and choked up access roads, convinces me to drive many more miles to shop in Salisbury? There are no national shops or even marginally exciting ones in town to attract me, but the one thing that I know is on bad vehicle days, much of the extra traffic is caused by cars looking for a parking space.

The plan to sell the Station Road car park will lose 170 car parking spaces and Central car park will lose 12 ­ will that really help attract more shoppers?

Or possibly convince more to clog up more roads and shop in Salisbury, Marlborough or even Chippenham?

I hope you can help those who are being asked to fill in questionnaires, that they need to consider a much wider concept than the yes or no answers requested by Kennet's latest town planning consultation. Please do not let them compound the mistakes of the past without the locals being able to see a larger picture.

D Hawkins

Littleton Panell

Archive Home