What you should know about the history of the Station Approach scheme in Winchester

Silver Hill, also known as the Central Winchester Regeneration and more recently Saxon Gate, has been making headlines since the late 1990s.

But the Station Approach scheme is a relative newcomer with major proposals for redevelopment only really surfacing in the last five years. Like Silver Hill they have become ensnared in planning arguments and claims that Winchester is becoming impossible to develop.

READ MORE: Winchester city council restarts £150m Station Approach scheme

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The 'Station Approach' area covers the chunk of land near the railway station, from Station Road to Sussex Street and between Station Hill and Gladstone Street, known as the Carfax site, after a hotel that stood on the site until the 1970s. It also includes part of Andover Road and the triangle of land next known as the Cattle Market car park between Worthy Lane and Andover Road.

Much of the two sites are in public ownership and comprise car parks and so are considered ripe to be redeveloped.

But like Silver Hill, it become bedevilled with complications. Station Approach should have been simpler as all the land was initially owned either by the city or county councils. In 2013 the city bought from the county chunks of the Carfax site for £2.5 million.

Through 2014 and 2015 a scheme was drawn up but it was derailed in July 2016 when Tory councillors Kim Gottlieb, whose successful judicial review scuppered the first scheme for Silver Hill, and Rose Burns, switched their votes to the Liberal Democrats.

The proposal, put forward by Michael Hopkins Architects, had won a competition in 2015. The competition had been marked by several firms withdrawing because of the rules of the competition were said to be too restrictive and fees too low.

The surprise veto followed concerns around potential overdevelopment, which required large numbers of parking spaces and the demolition of the former Register Office.

Winchester architect Paul Bulkeley, said in 2020: “A frustration is growing in the architect profession that Winchester is getting a reputation not to do commercial development. It is getting a reputation as a place only to do housing.

“We have lost 10-15 years on Silver Hill and five years on Station Approach and we are back where we started again. Somehow we have to work out why we are getting it wrong. The system is not functioning properly."

Fresh plans were drawn up, with more public consultations and in spring 2017 the council produced a design brief which said both the Carfax site and Cattle Market could hold up to 13,000 square metres of offices on both sites.

In September 2017 Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands (LDS) were selected following an international search and in March 2018 a new masterplan was signed off.

The city council still had in mind that the Carfax site could become a prestigious location for high-grade offices, supported by the Chamber of Commerce and Winchester BID who argued that the city lacks such space.

In 2018/19 the council submitted a plan for offices of up to six storeys totalling 17,900 square metres, greater than was agreed in the masterplan from March 2018. . The proposal was costed at around £150m making it the biggest in the city's history.

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Many people argued that the proposal was still too big, including the City of Winchester Trust. The trust, the city's main preservation watchdogs, said the Local Plan said the site should have a mixed use but the scheme was mainly office. It would tower over Gladstone partly because of the underground parking for 95 cars.

In September 2019 the council finally granted itself outline planning permission but last November the City of Winchester Trust sought a judicial review at the High Court in London and the council admitted it had made a mistake and withdrew the scheme.

That has put in jeopardy a £5m grant from the Local Economic Partnership

Then coronavirus intervened and the world changed.

In April local conservationist and former city councillor Judith Martin proposed a scheme for 20-30 council houses on the Gladstone Street car park and the retention of the former South Western Inn/Registry Office as a boutique hotel. Her scheme would also have retained the small copse of silver birch next to the Hampshire Record Office.

Judith Martin

Ms Martin argued that a large office scheme would be riskier than a scheme of homes for rent.

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