The STAG team has examined the latest ‘amendments’ to Gladedale’s 2009 development plans. We are disappointed to report that they completely ignore the concerns of local people, just as the last batch of ‘amendments’ did six months ago.
Astonishingly, given the length of time in preparation, the latest submission is also mired in mistakes, omissions, misinformation and obfuscation.
It talks grandly of Gladedale’s scheme “preserving and enhancing” the area, of bringing back “derelict” buildings into beneficial use and creating “a sustainable residential community within a stunning landscape setting”.
In fact, it does none of these things. While there have been some improvements to the layout and environment of the listed Burton terrace (the former art school), the bulk of the scheme remains as overbearing, unsympathetic and intrusive as ever.
Rather than meaningfully reducing the number of housing units (the total is down from 163 to 155), Gladedale has shuffled the arrangement of on-site parking spaces to make room for a fenced, rectangular patch of grass in the middle of the development which would seem to serve no useful function other than as an exercise area for dogs.
The only significant change from the last set of plans is that this time Gladedale has enlisted the help of specialist, heritage architects to add some gravitas – and gloss - to their application. But if the intention was to disguise its inadequacies, it hasn’t worked.
The development is the same combination of off-the-shelf ‘town’ houses and unimaginative blocks of flats; virtually the same site footprint; the same high density; the same undistinguished architecture.
The scores of one and two-bedroom flats are just as uncongenial as before. Many are mean-sized and some are crammed into north facing blocks with restricted daylight and an outlook onto a shadowy bank.
Like its predecessors, the latest plan bypasses explicit policies designed to protect important conservation areas. In particular, it treats the visually interesting topography of the Archery Ground as a problem to be overcome.
Squeezing blocks of flats into the northern end of the site will require the sloping banks to be cut back and contained behind concrete retaining walls, at the cost of many mature trees and shrubs that give the area its rural character.
What can still be identified as the bowl of the original quarry – used by the Burtons to extract stone for building their New Town - will be partially filled with spoil and then levelled to create a base for new building.
If these plans are approved, STAG believes they will permanently damage the unique townscape and heritage assets of the Burton area.
The archaeological and historic importance of the Archery Ground will be obliterated.
The character and social cohesion of the area will be threatened.
The Archery Ground will be reduced to a crowded, concrete, urban ghetto.
