What is our city council trying to do to us? 

The proposals for multiple four and five storey office blocks is quite insane. 

The UK was, until recently, what was known as a developed economy based on the service industry, which takes up vast amounts of office space. 

Covid came along at the same time as greater availability of fast broadband and many of those service industry workers now work from home for at least part of their week and there is little growth in this sector. 

Supply chain security, global politics and Brexit are all in the process of changing the profile of our economy back to a greater proportion of manufacturing and logistics, so our economy will be increasingly in need of factory and warehouse space, not offices so why build vast capacity which will sit idle. I'm not sure that we want to increase provision for yet more university students either, as the city is already over-run with them and there are calls for the way universities are funded to change, with more emphasis on vocational training such as the old apprenticeships, so that could reduce numbers in the long term. More redundant, empty buildings. 

The carbon footprint of building construction is truly massive and our city council has declared a climate emergency, so what part of this equation don't they understand? We do not need a Station Approach redevelopment. We should be limiting all development to minimal, organic based on-demand schemes, not grand vanity projects of speculative build, supported by developers who stand to gain and seem to be able to convince our council to enter into such ventures. 

The Bushfield site may just be suitable for manufacturing and logistics but we need a customer calling for it first before a spade of soil is turned. Unless of course, the council wants to build some houses?

Chris Blackman,
Cheriton Road,
Winchester

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